WoW insider

Filed under: Realm Status, Blizzard, News items

Blizzard has just announced via its Warcraft Twitter account and the forums that the Customer Support team now has its own Twitter. The full text of the forum announcement is below:

Auryk You can now follow all Blizzard Entertainment Customer Support news and updates on Twitter. Just head over to @BlizzardCS, (http://twitter.com/BlizzardCS) for the latest Support related news, events and more. We will be providing constant updates during Tuesday's maintenance and service outages. Additionally, you will be able to view updates to our Queue Times for Game Master interactions, account investigations and escalated tickets alike.

source
No word if the intermittent outages of the authentication system that were recently being experienced will be reported on this new Twitter account, but I think this is a step in the right direction for further increasing the communication from Blizzard to its customer base.

Blizzard customer service now has its own Twitter account originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Cataclysm

Good news, everyone! I've fixed the poison slime pi -- wait. We've got other good news! Heroic Shadowfang Keep and heroic Deadmines, which were said at the Cataclysm press event to have been scrapped until a later patch, are now slated to be in at release! Valnoth has confirmed that the new versions of these classic dungeons are being released with Cataclysm.
Valnoth -- Re: Now when Valnoth said ALL dungeons... Quote:

Heroic SFK/Deadmines are not being released with Cataclysm, but with a patch after it goes live.
Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines WILL be released with Cataclysm. You will not have to wait for a later patch.

source
Players can now expect Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep to join the heroic ranks of Throne of the Tides, Blackrock Caverns, The Stonecore, The Halls of Origination, Grim Batol, Vortex Pinnacle and The Lost City of Tol'vir when Cataclysm releases.

Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines will be released with Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

This past week was not the most exciting week ever. It was a week without a major patch on beta realms and a week without a lot of announcements in general! We still have plenty of great content that you may have missed over the course of the week, such our class columns, our worgen starting zone walkthrough and an assortment of other Cataclysm content. Head behind the cut below for links to all of our top content from the last week.

If you find yourselves especially bored today even after going through the backlog of posts you've missed this week, we have a fun little activity for you! Take the header image of this post, erase Deathy from the love-bubble, and insert other humorous things and link it in the comments below. Please, please keep it clean. You don't want to get banned, and I don't want to see your genitals. Really. I don't. I promise.

Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: Kawaii edition

Tuesday Morning Post: Kawaii edition originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, PvP

The latest WoW champions in the 2010 MLG Pro Circuit are the members of Nerdstomper Blue, who claimed their victory Sunday evening in Raleigh.

It was a close win for Nerdstomper Blue, after its opponents, Evil Geniuses, won the first set of the finals three to one. Evil Geniuses entered the finals from the lower bracket, though, and needed two winning sets to claim the championship. Things seemed doubtful for Nerdstomper Blue after it lost the first two games of the second set, but it made an impressive comeback, winning three games in a row and taking the championship. In addition to the $9,000 prize for first place, Nerdstomper Blue will now be seeded favorably at the MLG Finals in Dallas later this year.

If you missed the livestream, you can still watch the rebroadcast from Sunday's games at MLG's site.

For those of you who are curious, Nerdstomper Blue used a shadowplay comp (priest-warlock-shaman) for their first set against Evil Geniuses, then switched to RLS (rogue-warlock-shaman) for the second. Evil Geniuses used RLS for both sets.

Congratulations to Realz, Glickz and Kollektiv of Nerdstomper Blue!

Nerdstomper Blue win MLG Raleigh originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. We have new news about the release date of Cataclysm: It needs a few more months. OK, so it's not a solid date, but since I have been doing a lot of beta testing lately, it's sort of nice to know I might still have time to get back to live servers and finish Loremaster before the expansion drops.

Okay, that's a lie. I want Cataclysm now. Well, not now, because it's obviously still sort of buggy and needs testing. But you get the picture. Of course, what we want and what we get are generally two different things. That said, this morning may be relatively unique in that there is, as of this writing, no anticipated downtime. That said, if you still need a little break from WoW, we have a lot of news for you to catch up on. You can catch up on the latest from both the live servers and the Cataclysm beta after the break.

Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: Soon edition

Tuesday Morning Post: Soon edition originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Arts and Crafts

Do you wear clothing? If you do, you can wear clothing that tells everyone who sees you that you're scared of a level 11 gnoll elite. And much more, to be fair, because J!NX has announced the fall 2010 lineup, and BlizzPlanet has the details.

Paladins and death knights finally get their 'Legendary' t-shirt designs, there's a couple of nice hoodie designs (I'm partial to the Horde one myself, looks more natural as a spray style) and much more. Go check it out. Heck, while you're at it, you can always get an old favorite of mine.

J!NX unveils fall 2010 World of Warcraft t-shirts originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Cataclysm

UPDATE: The Escapist has posted the full text of their interview with Ghostcrawler, so I've replaced the "abridged" version with the actual exchange instead.

Those of you who've played other MMOs (yes, they exist) might recall a feature from City of Heroes (yes, CoH did it before EQ2) that let you temporarily level down your character to a friend's level, allowing you to do any kind of level-relevant content together. Well, guess what? Blizzard is planning to let you do the same thing in a Cataclysm content patch, avoiding the type of situation you see above.

The Escapist recently interviewed Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street about Cataclysm, and this exchange took place:
Ghostcrawler:
A very simple thing we've done is just put on your character panel what phase you're in. So that you can look and be like "Oh, so the reason I can't see you is because we're in different phases." Long-term, we're trying to work on a system where you can actually go back and forward a little bit. You might be able to scale your character down levels in order to go play with a friend, and even redo quests that you've done before.

Part of the reason we're able to do that is because of the technology we originally developed for heirloom items, which are items that scale. And then for the Cataclysm expansion, we've changed spells, so they also scale with level. So instead of having ranks now, your fireball will just get more powerful as you gain levels. So since you can scale both class spells and items really easily, now we think we can actually let you lower your level down if you want to play with somebody else.

I kinda wanted to have that for Cataclysm launch, but it's a feature we're working on.

John Funk:
So do you think that's saying that, like cross-server dungeons, it might be patched in before the next expansion?

Ghostcrawler:
Yeah. I mean, we gotta get this one out the door first to know how much we need to do for the patches that come afterwards, but it's definitely in the long-term plan. We hadn't heard anything about this feature before, but it sounds great -- this way, you can play with a lowbie friend without drastically reducing his experience gain, and you'll always have something to do together. Heck, it could even pave the way for making old raids relevant again. I'm excited to see how this plays out!
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

A City of Heroes-style mentoring system "in the long-term plan" for Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Cataclysm

German entertainment site Gamona landed an interview with World of Warcraft Game Director Tom Chilton at Gamescom 2010. They cover a myriad of topics including Tol Barad, guild leveling, the state of the various classes in the Cataclysm beta and the reasoning behind Facebook integration into their games. But perhaps the most interesting piece of data is that according to Tom Chilton, Cataclysm needs "a couple more months" of work. While that might seem terribly obvious to some, it's the closest thing to an official timetable we've heard from Blizzard or a Blizzard employee beyond the aim for releasing in 2010.

A "couple more months" would set the launch firmly after BlizzCon and leaning closer to the holiday season. Mike Morhaime recently confirmed that the expansion was still on track for a 2010 release, so we're most likely looking at a November or December launch. I, for one, look forward to another middle-of-winter midnight release.

Head on over to Gamona.de for the full video interview.

Cataclysm needs a "couple more months" before release originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! It's another 24-hour downtime for a new list of servers, including mine. The other servers will be getting a standard maintenance window of 5-11 a.m. Pacific.

Luckily, with all this downtime, we just got a new beta patch with a decent amount of content, including new loading screens (though I do hope they consider replacing the worgen and goblin models with something more fitting), a new character model for Thrall, and a bunch of pretty epic new music. Also included were class changes, including masteries and a new Holy Power bar for paladins, as well as guild vendors for new guild-only purchased rewards. There's plenty of other news to peruse as well, so whether your server is down for six hours or 24 hours, why not follow me behind the break to see what else you may have missed over the past few days while you wait for the server maintenance party to start?

Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: Revenge of the 24-hour downtime

Tuesday Morning Post: Revenge of the 24-hour downtime originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King

China is rejoicing at the release of Wrath of the Lich King (finally!), but the game they will be playing looks a little different from the version everyone else is playing now. Chinagame.178.com, a Bejing-based English site for gaming news has posted an interesting article with some screenshots of just what will be changing in Wrath. Included are shots of the before and after purging of skulls from various items in the game, as well as some surprising model changes.

The censorship issue isn't exactly a new one -- changes have been made to the game dating all the way back to when The9 was handling the property. But it's still interesting to see exactly how an expansion like Wrath, which is centered around a storyline involving the Lich King, master of the undead, has been adapted to make it suitable according to China's requirements. It does make me wonder though -- what's Icecrown Citadel and the final fight against the Lich King himself going to look like? Is China going to miss out on Marrowgar's bonestorms? Check out the full article for screenshots and commentary.

[Thanks, Gabriel!]

Wrath of the Lich King: China's version originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Blizzard, News items

Blizzard has announced on the loading screen another round of 24-hour maintenance for select realms to happen on Tuesday. This is part of the continuing plan to upgrade all servers before Cataclysm. The servers not listed will be undergoing normal maintenance, though that often means that those servers' downtime will also be extended at least a couple of hours. We shall see.

Of course, this means that we're going to have to have another WoW.com Server Maintenance Party. Since neither Shadow Council (US-RP-A) nor Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H) will be affected, we have our choice of realms. So the question is ...

View Poll

Polls close Sunday and we'll announce the event details on Monday. Expect the event to take place around 10:30 p.m. EDT (7:30 p.m. PDT) Tuesday night. I will also be streaming the event on WoW.com's Justin.tv channel.

The full announcement from Blizzard is after the break.

Continue reading 24-hour maintenance announced for more realms

24-hour maintenance announced for more realms originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 14 Aug 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Blizzard, News items

A judge in the California Central District Court ruled Thursday that Scapegaming, also known as Alyson Reeves, has lost its lawsuit against Blizzard. Scapegaming had set up private Blizzard servers that included a microtransactions market. Blizzard sued them in October 2009 for copyright infringement.

As we've covered here before, private servers are a violation of license limitations of the EULA. Blizzard considers any violation of those license limitations to be copyright infringement and sues people for such. Furthermore, Blizzard established in the "Bnetd" case that crafting software to set up a private server is a copyright infringement all on its own.

The total reward of $88,594,589 comes from $3,053,339 of inappropriate profits, $63,600 of attorney's fees, and $85,478,600 of statutory damages. Statutory damages are damages required by law that are increased for willful and commercially based infringement. Scapegaming may appeal the amount.

Private server company forced to pay Blizzard $88 million originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, BlizzCon

Miss out on your chance to get BlizzCon tickets this year? No worries -- NBC's The Event, an upcoming conspiracy thriller television series created by Nick Wauters, is giving away five pairs of tickets to BlizzCon 2010. You can enter at the sweepstakes page, and you can check out the official rules on the sweepstakes page as well. Unfortunately, the contest is only open to residents of the United States; however, for those who couldn't click quickly enough to purchase tickets, this is an opportunity to make it happen. Check out the sweepstakes page and make sure to get your entries in by Aug. 31!

NBC's The Event giving away BlizzCon 2010 tickets originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King

Big congratulations are in order for <Typhoon Struggle> of the Defias Brotherhood (EU) server, the first guild in the strict 10-man GuildOx rankings to kill the Lich King on heroic. GuildOx interviewed Sheeana, Typhoon Struggle's guild master, who shared some of the trials and tribulations of the kill, especially the brutal first phase of the encounter.

What are the 10-man strict rankings, you ask? GuildOx ranks the progression of guilds all across the different realms. The strict 10-man rankings are, essentially, 10-man raid groups that never have access to the 25-man versions of the instance. This means that a strict 10-man raiding group will never have gear or drops obtained through 25-man raiding.

To be considered and ranked on the GuildOx strict 10-man rankings, members of the 10-man raiding group can never earn an ICC-25 or ToGC-25 kill. Even though ICC-25 drops the same iLevel gear as ICC-10 heroic, GuildOx discourages the practice, as this allows strict 10-man raiding groups to gear up twice as fast. "Strict" means "strict." In addition, strict 10-man guilds usually only have a limited roster of between 10 to 12 people, since most others go on to the 25-man versions of the encounters.

According to Sheeana, the toughest phase was the first, as the Lich King's minions on heroic scale in power exponentially. These are raiders using, at the most, iLevel 264 gear.

For the full interview and announcement, including the criteria for the strict 10-man rankings, visit GuildOx. You can learn more about the criteria surrounding the strict 10-man rules here. Again, big congratulations to Typhoon Struggle!

Typhoon Struggle claims world first strict 10-man heroic Lich King kill originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. The big news this week has the been the beta test of the new patch process and launcher, which allows you to play even when your patch is only partially done. I've tried it out myself, and I must say, it's quite a feeling logging into Acherus to see nothing but the Eastern Plaguelands spread out below you for miles as the hold itself shifts into being around you. It's sort of crazy. Still, I imagine most of the time I'll just wait for the download to finish.

There is, of course, plenty of other news to catch up on. If you're waiting out this morning's rolling restarts, why not check and see if you missed anything from the past few days? Our usual roundup awaits after the break.

Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: Adventures in beta patching edition

Tuesday Morning Post: Adventures in beta patching edition originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Warlock, News items, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Cataclysm

Bloody tears stream from the eyes of the hopelessly insane, huddled silently in wait and separated from reality by the voices echoing within their minds. The whispers speak their names in bidding, and the horror lies not in their sinister calling but in knowledge of a dreaded fate if a summon were to go unanswered. This is the life, and death, of enslaved demons, warlock minions, and the Blood Pact they dare not deny their masters.

The darkest of salutations, warlocks.

Monday is upon us. You know what that means, don't you? It is time to check your kill quotas for the month, browse the local newspapers for a fine selection of newborn baby announcements (aka dinner plans) and peruse the obituary section for mage funerals to attend, corpses to desecrate and mourners to cast into mage heaven (read: a Celine Dion concert, aka warlock hell) with their fallen brethren. I hear that Julia Sunstriker is going to meet a timely, explosive, bright and violent death soon. It would be a pity to miss that party, wouldn't it?

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves with images of pain and our pleasure, Mondays also mean that we have class matters to attend to. And with the incoming Cataclysm on the not-so-distant horizon, we are going to continue processing the goodness that a lucky few of us are witnessing in the beta.

Last week, we spent a great deal of energy and saliva lusting over the devilishly delicious talents placed into the affliction tree -- I am still recovering from the loss of fluids. This week, we're going to switch specs and dissect, discuss, devour and digest the key changes made for those master summoners among us, the demonology warlocks. Needless to say, there will be what some may consider spoilers ahead, so if you're the type that wants to experience every detail of the expansion as a virgin and first hand, be careful where you click. That giant "Read more" is probably something you should stay away from.

Those of you who are yearning for more, you may want to grab some food and drink for sustenance and have a mop and bucket ready for easy cleanup, because this is going to get nasty -- in a good kind of way, of course.

Ready? Good. Let's press on.

Continue reading Blood Pact: Demonology changes in the beta

Blood Pact: Demonology changes in the beta originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Cataclysm

In a forum thread that started about the current state of talent tree design and the infamous "this tree is too bloated" vs. "there's not enough choice" debate for each, our old crustacean pal Ghostcrawler comes in and waxes philosophical. While I think his entire answer is interesting, I'm going to focus on just one aspect of it here.

Ghostcrawler - Re: Bloat vs. Choice I'm really not building towards any kind of conclusion with any of that. It has just been interesting to see the feedback. I guess I can offer that you might want to be careful about who you think you are speaking for when you say "we feel this" or "we don't want that." Players, even the microcosm of the forum community, want different things.

source
He lists a long series of different viewpoints some players hold which I think is worth reading in its entirety. It got me to thinking about my own general prefences as to how a talent tree should be designed. I basically like it when there's enough room in any talent tree for two fairly viable builds to emerge in that tree. Back in the day, (not so far back that actual dinosaurs roamed the earth) you had the dual wield and two handed slam builds for fury, and both were fairly viable. (Dual wield did usually come out ahead on damage.) However, I think it unlikely that such a diversity of option in each talent tree is really possible, and a good compromise is the idea that you can get most of the talents you're going to want and then customize based on preference. This is seen in the current warrior protection tree on the beta where one can spec for AoE or single target after picking up most of the core tanking talents.

It's an interesting read all told. Give it a read and see what you think about the idea: how would you define your preferences for talent design? Is there a valid distinction between bloat and choice in a tree? If so, what is it?

Ghostcrawler on bloat vs. choice in talent trees originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Lore, Cataclysm

If you haven't done the extended series of quests in the Dragonblight that lead up to the Wrathgate cinematic yet, first off, I don't understand why. Get up there and do that. However (and more importantly), if you haven't done that quest line all the way to its satisfying, lore-filled conclusion, The Battle For The Undercity, by the time the pre-Cataclysm patch drops, you might not be able to.

In response to a forum thread started by Cedrickt on the beta forums, Valnorth stated that the Dragonblight quest line ends at the Wrathgate cinematic on the beta. As yet, there's no further information. We don't know if there's any intention to add in entirely new quests, but I expect not; trying to gibe Garrosh as Warchief with the events of Wrathgate (to which much of his policy toward Sylvanas is a direct response) would be very difficult indeed.

Go play it while you can. It's a lot of fun. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From goblins and worgen to mastery and guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

Battle for Undercity removed in Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Account Security

Blizzard announced via the customer support forum that it will take proactive steps to quell some of the unsavory behavior on Moon Guard (US), a server notable for its infamous Goldshire inn naughty shenanigans. After a father posted about canceling his son's account because of the general and trade chats on the Moon Guard server, Blizzard customer service responded in definitive terms -- Moon Guard's Goldshire will be actively "patrolled" by customer service team members.

Check out the full Blizzard response after the break.

Continue reading Blizzard to patrol Moon Guard's Goldshire for harassment, erotic role playing

Blizzard to patrol Moon Guard's Goldshire for harassment, erotic role playing originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. It's been a surprisingly sluggish week for WoW news. This may be because the dev team is recovering from the San Diego Comic Con, or because they're playing too much Starcraft II. Myself, I'm thinking that they may have spent all their mojo making the Maelstrom as epic as possible. Whatever it is, they're giving a pass on server maintenance this week as well, so if you play in the early morning hours (or rather, what is early morning on the west coast of the USA), you're in the clear to keep on playing.

Of course, not everyone can play right now. Some of us are stuck at work or school. For all of you, we bring the usual round up of news from the past week, and there's some pretty good stuff in there, including screenshots of some never before seen Cataclysm zones! Check it out after the break.

Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: We make our own news edition

Tuesday Morning Post: We make our own news edition originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 03 Aug 2010 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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