Cata Pre-order now available.

Limited to one copy per customer. Gamestop limits you to 2 copies. One Day shipping from Amazon runs $10 and unlike Gamestop is likely to be tax free. Cost at Gamestop was $100.40 for me. Cost at Amazon was $89.97 with 1 day shipping. If you are patient you can get it with free shipping and likely get it the next day of release as I did with Starcraft II. Hoping to attend the event this year at Fry's if nothing prevents Vince from attending. If so I may actually have 2 copies of this for once.

Amazon Link

Wrath Gate changed with Xpac

Seems that the battle for Undercity will be removed from the game come the xpac. Best to hurry up and get to it on my alts!

Valnoth:

It's not bugged. The quest ends at the cinematic now.

Source.

New Cata Collector Edition Pet?

So reading up on some of the new data mined discoveries this pet was found. Interesting that we get a mini Neltharion as well as his daughter. I wonder if for the anniversary pet this year we get a mini Nefarian.

A Pony!

Wow. Well speculation is over and I was mistaken in presuming that the Celestial Steed would be a drop off Algalon which is listed as the final boss in VOA. Instead any player can purchase this mount for $25 from the blizzard store. From what I read there were high queues for folks waiting to purchase items from the Blizzard store and now there is a report that the mount generated $2 million dollars for Blizzard in just 4 hours!

I do want the mount but due to a recent mugging attempt I endured I will have to wait for my funds to be able to regenerate.

I understand players are upset that this mount is available for sale. However many arguements don't hold water as to why this mount should not be obtainable for cash. One I heard was the "I already pay $15 a month.... " which is utter fail. Players pay a lease for an account every month. Smart players can end up paying $13 instead of $15 to boot. Paying a subscription does not give one the right to "free" items from a store. Just like the pets, the mount is nice but optional. You don't need it to play. So if a player does not like the concept of paying for this mount, they don't have to buy it. It's like the Ipad arguments. No one is forcing anyone to buy an Ipad. The best reason not to get an Ipad, or a Celestial Steed is not wanting one.

Murkimus now available to all eligible account characters!

Joy!! I am very happy to find out that Murkimus is now available to all characters on the eligible accounts that participated on the arena tournament servers. I do have some alts that of course were not able to obtain this pet. However now they can! My one hope though is that the Blizzcon 2008 Bear mount be made available in a similar fashion. However this will be resolved once cross-server mail is implemented.

Bashiok states:

With the release of patch 3.3.3 those who received the Murkimus pet for their participation in the 2009 Arena Tournament will notice that the pet is being changed to apply to the entire World of Warcraft account that was requested to receive the pet. Players who have created characters on this same account since the tournament will see a Murkimus in their in-game mailboxes and all new characters on this account will receive it as well. The in-game mail containing this pet will go out in the near future.

With this change you’ll finally be able to play any of your characters, stand up defiantly, and exclaim “I’m Murkimus!”

edit: Please note that the information given was not accurate in the original message but has been updated to reflect that this is World of Warcraft license specific change, and is not applied to the entire Battle.net account.

Source.

Greed only on Frozen Orbs in 3.3.3

Wryxian, a EU CM, has confirmed that in Patch 3.3.3. players will not be able to roll need on Frozen Orbs. This is great news as some folks wait till the end to roll need on the orb, or someone will forget to roll need when players state that they will roll need on the orb at the end.

Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice!

Source.

Algalon Listed As Final Boss in VOA.

The EU's WOW site announces that Algalon is the final boss in VOA!

Sites like wow.com and MMO-champ (as of yet) have not determined where the celestial items that have been data mined are supposed to come from, this posting pretty much points to Algalon dropping them. There has been some discussion that Algalon would become more available to other players in Ulduar however placing him on VOA would make more sense and convenience.

Patch 3.3.3 Looking For Dungeon World Event Boss changes.

When the news came out about the changes to the LFD system to include holiday world event boss encounters I was very pleased. It is at times difficult to find a group on your server, get to the location, and then have to replace someone when the need arises. With this added to the system it will actually eliminate many of the little problems that players encountered.

There is some misunderstanding as to the changes since CM Zarhym stated:

Yes, the Dungeon Finder must be used. The interface will have a separate selection for special World Event bosses in dungeons. If players zone into the dungeon without using the Dungeon Finder, the bosses will not be there.

This also led me to have some misconceptions as to how this would operate. Would we no longer be able to get a group of friends or guild to run these limited encounters? Thankfully though there has been a little bit of clarification as to how this will work.

This will work just like the dungeons work now. You form a group or queue for a PUG group and you will be ported to the dungeon.

The ability to summon the boss for the encounter will no longer be needed.

This change will eliminate any issues with one member of the group leaving after the first four "summons" had been used. There is a lot more to this matter.

There was some important clarification how the boss encounters have changed thanks to this recent post!

Your group will zone in, fight the boss. Upon defeating the boss you will earn a "trove" that has a chance to contain a rare holiday item that most seek during these events. This will be exactly as how Oculus has a chance at awarding a drake mount to a player. There will be no rolling against other players. You just have a chance at being lucky. However you will only receive this ONCE per day, in the manner one obtains 2 frost emblems for their first random heroic of the day.

If a person has already had a boss kill for the day they are still able to participate in more encounters. Players will be able to roll other "normal" drops from these bosses thus making the holiday gear farmable.

Ever experience a wipe cause the group failed to understand the mechanics of the fight or you just got unlucky in some PUG? Well this is no longer a problem! No more wasted "summons"!!

There will be no limit as to how often you can farm for the gear on your characters with this change!

Some players have expressed frustration that their alts will not be permitted to participate with the "extra" summons they can provide however with no limitation to how often you can encounter the holiday bosses the need for alts is very much eliminated.

Some feel that this will directly affect the value of the Direbrew Remote that drops off Coren Direbrew, the Brewfest event boss located in Blackrock Depths (BRD).

The upcoming changes will remove the usefulness of the device to transport a group directly to the bar in BRD for the holiday boss. However this is not the only ability of the remote and it will still have an impact for the fight.

This device has the ability to summon TAFKA L80 ETC (The Artists Formally Know As Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan. Summoning the band will provide a 5 min buff increasing your stats by 5% and this stacks with Blessing of Kings.

The remote will also help those seeking to do reputation turn in for Thorium Brotherhood or for a quick run to obtain some Dire Brew from the Dark Iron Brewer at the bar. Dark Iron Ale which is needed for the Dark Moon Faire pet frog Jubjub can be obtained from Pugger Spazzring very quickly as well. This can sell well to those who lack the device and don't want to take the time to acquire the BRD key and clear their way through in order to access the quest that awards the Jubling frog.

One other issue that many have overlooked was how the holiday boss events affected players who were trying to do the dungeons as intended. BRD was infamous for having hostile mobs at max level aggro instantly to players of the proper level for the dungeon (52 - 60) making it impossible to zone in unless they recruited a character at a much higher level. Now that these mobs and the bosses are no longer accessible outside of the LFD tool this will no longer be an issue.

I am very happy to have these changes come about. This past Love is in the Air holiday I was only able to rarely find a group to do the holiday boss. From what I have read I am not the only one that had difficulty finding a group. Given that my guild collapsed I am dependent on PUGS to try to get to attempt these bosses and the LFD addition really fixes many problems.

Sorry for how the font changed in this post. I am posting too early in the morn and by quoting with a cut and paste, the format of this post went haywire. I tried setting the text back to normal but it won't cooperate with me. Maybe I am just tired how the blog site is very limiting.

CAD Comic

While I may not agree with everything Tim Buckley does, this very recent comic regarding the hot topic of GearScore is a great read.

Lunar Festival Elder Change.

So with all the changes to Love is in the Air which I am currently working on for my alts, I noticed that the Elder Ohanze that is inside Gundrak has been moved! Last year you could only gain access to him if you entered the dungeon in heroic mode as he was close to the extra boss. This now means that your character does not have to be level 80 to complete the achievements for the holiday. This will makes things flow faster for my characters. I just wish that Love is in the Air did not require you to zone into Naxx. This means you have to be 80. I may not be able to get this on my lock or druid. Oh well must try! I have 3 days!

Well where to begin. I recently suffered severe loss of time which resulted in my not being able to access the net fully, or be able to play WOW for two weeks. I got a call a few days ago from Sarah, who also has been unable to play due to real life circumstances.

Seems my guild has lost many of the core raiders in my absence and pretty much I feel responsible for this due to the unplanned absence.

We've struggled through the holidays with lackluster attendance and then we had some folks just decide to transfer off the server. For some folks they could not play due to new jobs, the lack of job, or other matters. It upsets me that real life pretty much hit me hard and it compromised my ability to do anything.

Now after thinking about it I am not sure what to do. Part of me I guess is grateful due to my not having to deal with any more stress about raiding with the guild. Part of me always had a reservation when I was looking for work that I had to find something that would permit me to play with guild. When we had a drop in attendance I stressed over having to make it back in time to raid so that the raid would happen. Now that the guild is no longer capable of raiding, I am wondering if it is not a blessing in disguise.

While I did trust some administration of the guild to other officers I still had a lot of stress with regards to complaints and issues. However I think we were cursed in that we just tried to be too casual. Nothing wrong with casual play as well... I still feel Real Life is more important then a game. I lament the loss of online fellow gamers, whom I had hoped to consider friends. However only one person called me and no one except one former member emailed me to inform me that they were leaving the server.

Gevlon recently posted something that well, is very relevant to what has occurred.

"Many people claim that they are in a casual guild that is progressing. In these "casual" guilds the leadership and the tank/healer corps is HC. The same people tank, lead the raid or do main healing every raid. The DPS and the off-healers rotate casually. Without the HC core, the "casual" guild dies."

That pretty much describes most guilds that try to raid. Yes the raids are easier however with recruitment issues abound you normally settle for trying to be a 10 man raiding guild. The guild twice almost had the numbers to be a 25 man guild however we kept falling apart for several reasons on those occasions. When you have casual attendance with just barely the numbers to fill a 10 man, you will suffer from absences.

While I am severely disappointed in what has happened... enough that my stomach is upset over this due to the stress... I feel I am not completely at fault. Heck others have had RL circumstances take time away. This time I had a severe amount of excess issues and well it resulted in the loss of thousands in gold from both AH items as well as items I will never recover in the mail. I lost too many emblems of frost on four 80s.

Now however I think if folks wish to remain in the guild, I will keep it around. I don't think we will have the will to recover at the moment. Most folks want to be progressing and it was members that raided leaving that really hurt the "community". I always stated community comes first and I want to see if this will remain.

Right now the game does not give much incentive to remain in a guild when pugs can do most of the raids. If folks want Hard Modes then sure you want your own group. On my server there are already raiding groups that are not guilded clearing ICC every week.

What I think this will mean is that I may perhaps finally get to play as I want to. I can not stress about potential work and conflicts with guild raiding. I'll raid when I can and not have the stress of a schedule conflict. I may take more time off working on my characters and focus on my hunter getting her achievements done. Not sure.

Don't get me wrong but at least I have the freedom to state I can work ANY hours with no concern as to guild raids. I may have my main join another guild once my work situation settles. I can actually BE SELFISH for once and play for myself. Seems like my other "friends" decided to do so and while I am disappointed one has to be happy. I am not sure how long I would have been able to stress myself before I came up with the solution to quit the game.

WOW is about having fun. It is no crime to be selfish about it and want to have as much fun as possible. Maybe... just maybe folks leaving the guild to rot is a blessing in disguise.

The guild was still more pleasant then others I have been in. I just hope the remaining members help make it remain so.

Account Security Issues.

Two days ago I was on Proudmoore US and noticed that there were three different occurrences of accounts being compromised. One I saw in trade. The other was discussed in the a private channel while the third affected someone I know. In the third case, this was a guild master who had two accounts compromised which lead to one of her characters being transfered to another server, while on her main account her other characters were stripped and her guild bank emptied of all valuables.

I have always felt that an authenticator was very much worth the peace of mind. I myself had to be slapped into reality by a friend of mine to have one attached to my account. I had obtained mine as part of the Blizzcon 08 bag of goodies. Since I had one for free and I was responsible for the security of the guild, it was in best interest I do so. I have not regretted it since.

There have recently been a few articles on wow.com about changes in the method Blizzard is now dealing with account compromises. While the danger of losing an account has always been there, it seems that the gold selling companies are in force more then ever in attempting to steal gold from players in order to sell it to others.

It saddens me that there are only two reason folks who had neglected to secure their account with an authenticator are now getting one. Either they finally were compromised or they want the free core hound pet provided with one now.

Honestly I don't care what excuses folks come up with for not investing $6.50 for peace of mind. It's cheap. I'm under employed and I am considering obtaining a second one as back up for when the battery dies in mine. I'm glad that at least I am making it hard for a hacker to get into my account, likely disband my guild, and give me a headache that warrants others to quit the game all together at times for how much one feels violated upon.

WOW Magazine Arrives!

Well I obtained my copy two days ago. The width of the magazine reminds me of a Newtype magazine but of course thinner and of smaller height. The paper stock is of good quality and the cover overlaps both the front and the back. They included a pull out folded poster inside the middle of the publication of the same art work. The on line preview does give an general preview of what is in the magazine.

You have several pages which cover changes that are occurring with Cataclysm. Interview with Mike Morhaime. Coverage of non combat pets in game. An interview with Brian Brolin "Breanni" as well as some input from other players interviewed about their pets.

Discussion of Ice Crown Citadel as well as the Isle of Conquest, followed by articles of the trading card game competive play as well as Arena play. Heroic Prints got some attention with an article covering the posters they can produce for each individual character. As a fan of character goods I liked the insight the article gave on how these came about.

There is a guide to the Coliseum providing history and play strategies for both faction versions of Trial 5, 10 and 25 man. I am interested in the Healer UI article that follows, but have not read it as of yet. I thought it nice they included a UI article however.

The last few pages cover the 5th anniversary of WOW and as per the preview has a time line of events during those five years. Ony is covered as is a small segment on the foundation of the viral Ony video animation most of us have seen on the web. There is a guide to Arathi Basin, an introduction to Scourgewar, the articles on Tanking, DPS, and Healing, which were seen in the preview (and yes I agree the rogue dps article sadly got outdated with the changes in the patch but not much you can do about it being printed material).

The Fan Art section was very good yet quite small. One of the reason I wanted this magazine was the "unique" art that was to be included. It is my hope that this will be expanded upon as the publication matures.

There are of course some things I skipped and I don't regret my subscription to this magazine. I like having a physical publication I can share with others and I do like the quality of the images. I found the articles to be more accurate then other printed coverage of the game. I recall this PC Gamer publication which was about $8 and much thinner with ads. It was a one shot and I had considered obtaining it however many of the articles were sorely out of date and inaccurate. An example of this was coverage of Warsong Gulch describing it as a 15man battleground. The print quality in this magazine is far superior and enjoyable.

Hello Again!

I know it has been a while since I posted but I've been severely distracted for many reasons. I will try to be more active however. Not that many follow me or know about this blog bit I will try to keep it active.