World of Warcraft Gold Guide

 Skill Mastery: Survival Instincts Survival Instincts is one of the surviving (har!) aspects of the now-defunct 51-point Berserk talent in the feral tree (the other is the new version of Berserk, which we discussed here). It’s fairly straightforward; for 11 points in the feral tree and a 5-minute cooldown, you get 30% of your maximum health in bear or cat form for 20 seconds. Essentially it’s Last Stand for Druids, albeit a Last Stand with a significantly shorter cooldown. During 5-mans in the beta while tanking, I saw an HP boost into the 26-27K range from a health pool of 19-20K. That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at and it’s situationally useful, although it’ll probably find better and more consistent application under the same circumstances in which Last Stand’s typically popped, i.e. progression raid content and/or “Oh S**T!” moments. The latter is particularly welcome as Druids have often complained about bear form’s worrying lack of options in the event of an emergency. As many Warriors will tell you, proper use of the ability involves letting your healers know both when you’ve popped the ability and when it

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Notes from the BlizzCon 2008 Art panel   Greetings from sunny Anaheim, California! One of this years WoW-related BlizzCon panels focused on the process and inspiration for the creation of the art for various aspects of Warcraft. There were a total of 7 people on this panel, lead by Chris “The Intern” Robinson, the Art Director for WoW. Also on the panel were other representatives from the various art teams, enough that there was some confusion as to where they were all sitting at first. Before we get into the whole thing, I should mention the most important part: The artists all but said that giving visible armor to Druid forms is in the works! Exterior Art The first to speak was Gary Platner, the lead exterior artist. His team of consists of 11 people who design and implement the various landscapes and exterior zones in WoW. They draw everything by hand using WACOM tablets, and sometimes even pressure sensitive monitors. There’s no automation to their process, other than some basic software tools. To design a new zone, they start with a meeting where they discuss ideas and get everything on paper. From this, they create a basic zone in illustrator with

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