Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Tricks, How-tos, AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight, Guides

The new Recruit-A-Friend program has taken the World of Warcraft community by storm, perhaps more so in the dual- and multi-boxing circles. I’ll admit that while I advocate enjoying the leveling process and experiencing the lore through quests and in-game events, once you’ve hit 70 a couple of times, the magic tends to wane. With the coming of Wrath of the Lich King, we’ve had some time to re-evaluate our WoW experience. For many of us, finishing up some alts has become a way to prepare for the expansion. I’ve had a number of alts since I started playing, but have only managed to ding two paladins and a rogue. Each time I play in a battleground I see a member of another class do something crazy cool and ponder rolling whatever class it is.

With the RAF program in full effect, I decided that dual-boxing with the 300% XP and Summon Friend ability would be the most efficient way to get my alts Wrath-ready. This How-To is specifically for players using Macs, but in essence many of the principles remain true for PC users.

Continue reading Addon Spotlight: Mac Dual-boxing

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Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

Like most Wrath beta patches, build 8962 comes packing new achievements. This patch doesn’t have a massive list like some previous builds, but what it does have is pretty cool:

• Leading the Cavalry – Obtain 75 mounts, be rewarded with an Albino Drake.
• For the Alliance! – Slay the leaders of the Horde, be rewarded with a Black War Bear.
• For the Horde! – Slay the leaders of the Alliance, be rewarded with a Black War Bear.
• Glory of the Hero – Complete all of the Heroic Dungeon achievements, be rewarded with a Red Proto-Drake.
• Glory of the Raider – Complete the Normal Difficulty raid achievements, be rewarded with a Plagued Proto-Drake.
• Heroic: Glory of the Raider – Complete the Heroic Difficulty raid achievements, be rewarded wtih a Black Proto-Drake.
• What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been – Complete the World Event achievements, be rewarded with a Violet Proto-Drake. (Note: World events means holidays here, like Brewfest, not things like the Ahn’qiraj gate event.)

The rewards are definitely the most noteworthy part of this. Wrath of the Lich King is introducing a ton of new mounts, so it won’t surprise me to see massive diversity in what people are using after the expansion has been out for awhile. There are plenty that come from things other than Achievements as well, but we’ll get to those later.

[ via MMO-Champion ]

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If you want to make a bit of cash and grind rep with the Shattered Sun for some rather cool items, here’s the order of the quests that you want to do: Go to Shattrath and grab the following quests The Multiphase Survey Sunfury Attack Plans Gaining the Advantage (Requires a gathering skill, Skinning, Mining […]

Filed under: News items, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King

As much as some Blizzard reps might have wanted to play coy on the official forums, the official World of Warcraft site leaked a link to Pre-order Wrath of the Lich King which will — according to the page — indeed come out on November 13, 2008. So while there has mysteriously been no big announcement on the Blizzard websites, this Pre-order page pretty much confirms what Wowhead and Thottbot unveiled earlier today.

Participating retailers include Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, and GameStop. Interestingly enough, all the official links except for Best Buy peg the official release at November 3, a date leaked out in earlier reports. GameStop words it as “ships in 11/03/08” which could mean that the games will reach retailers over a week before the official release date. [EDIT: Or yeah, it could be that they haven’t updated their sites yet. Good morning!] The details include both normal and Collector’s Edition versions of the game. The official Blizzard site has, as of this writing, now been updated to reflect the official release date with a splash page.

[UPDATE: GameStop has revised their release date to match the announced date of 11/13/08]

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Horde has some pretty odd locations for trainers, resources, etc. But, when you are leveling engineering to 225, if you have a guild bank with the mats or your bank account with the mats and don’t need to continually buy mats from the Auction House, Rachet is your place. The engineering trainer is right near […]

Filed under: Enchanting, Features, Factions, Guides, Making money, Enchants, (Professions) Insider Trader

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Last week we took a look at some of the more popular and requested enchants and how to get them for yourself. I also promised that I’d continue the faction recipe series by taking a look at enchanting for this week.

So far, I’ve talked about the following professions and which factions hold appropriate recipes:

• Designs for jewelcrafters part one, and part two.
• Plans for blacksmiths.
• Recipes for alchemists.
• Patterns for leatherworkers.
• Patterns for tailors.

Here is a complete list of the factions to which any enchanter should “suck up” and how far you’ll need to take it:

• Shattered Sun Offensive, honored.
• Consortium, revered.
• Cenarion Expedition, exalted.
• Thrallmar/Honor Hold, exalted.
• Keepers of Time, exalted.
• Lower City, exalted.
• Sha’tar, exalted.
• Violet Eye, exalted.

Continue reading Insider Trader: Faction recipes for enchanters

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We were running a new guildie through to twink out his rogue and decided to farm Arcanist Doan for [item]34227[/item] which dropped on the first run. Having farmed 6 of these over the course of many trips, it was a bit of a shock, so, we decided to farm for [item]7682[/item] since we had time […]

A while back I had a bank alt that I needed to level to 35 to get Alchemy and Leatherworking up to a more respectable level. Along the way, I figured I’d make another low budget twink with relatively easily obtainable items. I didn’t really like the 30-39 bracket much, and now that level 30 […]

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, (BG PvP) The Art of War(craft), Achievements

Ah, world PvP. In many ways, world PvP can be considered the purest form of PvP because when it happens — if it’s not done in association with a quest or other form of reward — it is PvP for the sake of PvP. Some of the best times I’ve ever had doing PvP was in Hillsbrad Foothills, defending Tarren Mill and attacking Southshore. I miss the times when the World Defense channel would be flooded by calls to defend the Crossroads. There’s also something very pure about coming to the aid of a faction leader under assault. And when Wrath of the Lich King finally arrives, I have a good feeling it’s going to happen a lot more often.

I wrote about the many Achievements related to PvP, such as the retroactive Achievements that you can work on before Patch 3.0 hits, as well as the numerous Battlegrounds Achievements. Although PvP for the sake of PvP is extremely fun, Achievements will actually reward something that previously never got anything more than bragging rights and a silly grin. Today we’ll look at the numerous Achievements that work to encourage world PvP.

Continue reading The Art of War(craft): World PvP Achievements

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Filed under: Human, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, Tauren, Undead, Trolls, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Draenei, Blood Elves, Wrath of the Lich King

It looks like Blizzard isn’t done tinkering with everything for Wrath of the Lich King. This time, they’ve turned their attention to racial abilities, which many have pointed out to be imbalanced. Kalgan dropped by the forums to answer a good question regarding the Orc racial Hardiness, which grants a passive 15% resistance to stuns. It’s been nerfed a long way from its original 25% resistance, but the poster made a good point about the game’s direction towards reduced durations instead of resistances.

Kalgan responds by saying that Hardiness was being changed into exactly that — an effect duration reduction of 15%. He also goes over all the other racials, some of which were changed, others of which were buffed, and yet a few others of which were inevitably nerfed. The changes should make it into the next Beta push. Check after the break to see the complete list. [CLARIFICATION: This isn’t the complete list of racial abilities. Abilities not listed here are unchanged or, if they will be changed, will be mentioned in the future.]

Continue reading New racial abilities for Wrath

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