World of Warcraft Gold Guide

October, as with August, was mostly a lot of news reporting. The patch 3.3 PTR dropped on October 1st and everyone went nuts for the last (we think) major content patch of Wrath of the Lich King. Next up? The content patch heralding the approach of Cataclysm, but with a lot of gated content between ourselves and that, we’ve got a ways to go. Ask a Faction Leader: Cairne Bloodhoof: Among all the AAFL columns he’s done so far, Sacco’s personal favorite is Cairne. Spiritual Guidance: Don’t be that priest: Matt Low not-so-gently lectures his fellow priests on the failings to which the class is prone while not paying attention or entering an encounter unprepared. Searching for the most popular server: Schramm takes a look at some data and wonders — what’s the busiest and/or most crowded server out there? Patch 3.3 PTR: New Tauren skins found: So what are those things anyway? A new set of NPCs for Icecrown? A new barbershop option? Tribal markings for the Grimtotem? Chill of the Throne: Dodge nerfed 20% in Icecrown Citadel: The debuff is quickly termed “Icewell Radiance” by disgruntled tanks everywhere. Patch 3.3 PTR: Forge of

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Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the last match of the current round of the five-man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let’s get ready to rumble! Here we are at the end of our current bracket … And what a fight this last one will be! Bring your earplugs, because we suspect this fight’s going to be on the loud side: Skadi the Ruthless versus Svala Sorrowgrave. The two Utgarde Pinnacle residents step into the Two Bosses Thunderdome with nearly identical seeding. Skadi took out the venerable General Bjarngrim with 56% spectator approval, while Svala sacrificed Salramm the Fleshcrafter with 57% of the vote. Let’s review the ground rules: Why don’t we drag Svala’s altar around the corner into Skadi’s hall? As always, we’ll consider the Two Bosses Thunderdome neutral territory, where both combatants are able to access their usual encounter mechanics and abilities. If you can come up with a stylish way to do that in the comments, you may earn more votes for your chosen victor. All of the competitors’ abilities, including crowd control

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Every week (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. Too bad he was too busy running heroics to come to the aid of the King! With the new dungeon finder tool released, I felt it was a good idea to write up how a priest should handle themselves in instances with a group of players they don’t know. Once I started using the system, I became exposed to a large variety of different personalities, skill levels and gear levels. Quite the experience grouping with players packing gear ranging from Trial of the Grand Crusader to the random hunter wielding the grey bow of death. My approach to pugging has not been that different since the pre-dungeon tool era when players would randomly form up in groups for whatever the heroic daily was. After a while, I stopped doing heroics because I didn’t need the emblems anymore. In the end, I had to re-learn and remember some of the core philosophies I held onto when I dived back into the world of running heroic dungeons again. You set the pace Traditionally, the

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Michael Sacco will be your host today. It’s my little brother’s birthday today — fourteen years old, what the heck — so today’s Queue is quick and dirty so I can get the caking and presenting done. Lochlorien asked… Will we be able to wield Frostmourne after we defeat Arthas? Nope, the developers opted not to make Frostmourne an equippable weapon, replacing it as the Icecrown legendary weapon with Shadowmourne. Shabala asked… With Deathwing’s cataclysm and the reconstruction of the old world, will we be getting new music and a soundtrack for the altered zones? No indication yet, but we should have more info when Blizzard actually releases some new Cataclysm information. Three months without an update to the Cataclysm site, guys! I know what a slow PR drip is, but that’s a little much! F3rrat asked… Burning lore question (pun incoming) about Titans, Old Gods, and the Burning Crusade: Where are the first two in the third? Azeroth has Titan strongholds, Draenor has none. Azeroth has

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It’s been a year since the Wrath of the Lich King hit the shelves. Since that time, our myriad characters have stormed the beaches of Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra. We’ve fought and rescued dragons, worked with Murlocs, slaughtered each other in Wintergrasp, and clashed in the sea, land, and air. But with the final content patch of the expansion now chilling out on our hard drives, it’s time for the final countdown. We’re going to get to kill Arthas. And as excited about that as we are as players, you have to imagine the mounting incursion against the Lich King gets a much deeper and visceral emotion for our characters. This represents a relatively unique opportunity to roleplay your characters in an otherwise static world. After all, the entire game is about to change in some pretty radical ways. This is the purest possible fodder for roleplay, and it would be remiss of us to lose this opportunity. Join me behind the jump so that we can talk about the roleplay opportunities. The good, the bad, the ugly. The Good The good opportunities here are massive. It’s easy to simply roleplay your way through quests and enjoy the character immersion, but

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Patch 3.3, the Fall of the Lich King, is finally here, and you know what that means! Well, I mean, hopefully it means questions for the Queue that haven’t been asked a million times before, or questions about new content. Haha, just kidding. Today’s Queue, like most other Queues, has nearly nothing to do with current events. Khrono asked… Why is it that my Paladin can wield a two handed and one handed sword, but for some reason he can’t hold a dagger? Is there some lore out there that tells the tale of a Knight of the Silver Hand that insulted the dagger gods, so now we can’t use daggers? Cause there are some nicely itemized casting daggers out there I wouldn’t mind getting my hand on. It’s all about flavor. A dagger doesn’t fit the “kit” of a paladin in Blizzard’s eyes — much like you don’t see rogues using staves or priests using swords. There’s no discernable “lore” reason for it, or even a gameplay reason.

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