World of Warcraft Gold Guide

Blizzard updated the launcher again today without warning and hopefully without incident — unlike Monday, when everything went awry, errors abounded and people were unable to connect. There is no indication that patch 3.3 is anywhere near downloading or anything other than a small tools patch. There has also been no word from Blizzard yet on exactly what this patch does, but it is required if you want to log into the game. The patch is very small and only takes a handful of seconds to download and apply. We’ll keep an eye on this issue for any problems, but as of this writing, all is well.

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In a short (but not necessarily sweet) announcement, Zarhym announced on the official forums that the recently opened Blizzard pet store are now regional. This means that pets purchased from, say, the European store can only be redeemed on European World of Warcraft accounts. He doesn’t go into detail other than to say that pets that have already been purchased from one region and redeemed in another region are not affected by this change. While it’s a curious move on the surface, it effectively restricts players from Europe purchasing their Pandaren Monk and Lil’ K.T. from the US store where the pets are cheaper at $10 compared to €10 or £10 in the EU (roughly $15). Interestingly enough, the pets are priced at ₩12,000 in the Korean version of the store, which is about the same price as in the US ($10.3). It’s unclear why the European version of the pets — along with a few other Blizzard store items — are more expensive, a fact that makes Turpster huff and puff and blow Azerothian houses down. Obvious business reasons aside, it also creates a minor inconvenience for people who would like to give the pets as gifts to players in other

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Those vicious and despicable malware authors are targeting gamers, according to BBC. I know, big whoop, right? The news article reports on something many World of Warcraft players have known for years — that viruses, phishing sites, trojans, and all those dirty tech terms have us gamers smack in the middle of their digital crosshairs. The findings are a result from a study by Microsoft, which tracked the exceptional growth of a family of worms called Taterf. The programs have been around for some time now, snooping around players’ computers for login details to various games with in-game currency. World of Warcraft players are juicy targets because of the remarkably large player base and existence of the gold-buying industry which Blizzard has actively warned and fought against. While the findings are nothing new, they only serve to confirm our fears about the growing threats to our accounts. WoW.com has been big about account security for awhile, and it’s nice to see the mainstream media begin to show some attention to the matter.

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Welcome to November, dear readers! It’s the beginning of the month, so you know what time it is. Yes, we’re still judging our entries for October, but it’s time to kick off November’s Guild of the Month contest. If you haven’t been around for one of these before, let me explain how this works: If you think your guild is the best in the World of Warcraft, you might have a chance to win a $100 gift certificate from SwagDog where you can pick up custom guild apparel for you and members of your guild. What do you need to do to enter? It’s simple: You nominate your guild by sending us a short (no longer than 200 words) summary of why you think your guild is the best out there. Tell us why you think your guild is so unique! What sort of guild are you? What do you do together? What sets you apart from all of the other guilds out there? If you entered last month, no problem! Your guild can’t win again if you’ve won previously, but if you haven’t won yet in previous months, feel free to enter this month’s contest. Please send all submissions to contests@wow.com! At the end of the month, we’ll pick a winner from those

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Hey, you, reading this blog. You like playing World of Warcraft? You like listening to the sounds of the game as you do it? You got ears and a distinct predilection for playing in either the Horde or Alliance faction? Then boy do we have a headset for you: the Creative World of Warcraft Wireless gaming headset is going to be the hottest thing you can put on your head since the trucker hat, and here’s your chance to win one by commenting on this very post. As usual, the contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, October 21st, at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Please note: winners will not receive the headset until it is released later this year. Click here to read the official contest rules. Good luck to you all! And don’t forget, if you want to win five of

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As we’ve mentioned in a previous post, there are a new set of tutorials on the public test realm designed to help out new players when patch 3.3 launches. This should help smooth the overall experience for people who are completely new to the world of both MMOs as well as video games in general. While they aren’t nearly as amusing as the fake one I posted above (although, that one needs to get added at some point), they do walk characters through a lot of the major tasks. Currently, there are sixty different tutorial windows explaining things from food to durability loss. There is still plenty of room for additions, but these are a great start. While my gallery may not show it, a lot of the tutorials highlight parts of your screen like your enemy health bars, your minimap, or your action bars themselves to help show what new players are supposed to be looking at. Just a reminder that this is the PTR and these might end up changing or getting re-worded before they hit the live realms. If you have any constructive feedback on any of the tutorials in the gallery, please be sure to hit the US PTR forum or the EU PTR forum and let Blizzard know your thoughts on what

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Arbor Networks is a company that continually monitors the Internet and its usage — they keep track of Internet outages and site visits on a global scale. They just recently released a report of when traffic peaks in the evenings around the world, and at least one of their results is about the game we’re all playing, none other than World of Warcraft. In terms of just general consumer traffic online, the numbers tend to peak, according to the report, at around 8-11pm — the time right before bed when most Americans are done with dinner, and have a little free time to jump online and browse around. In terms of what they’re doing when online, simple web browsing makes up most of that traffic (52%), what’s the rest of it? Gaming, including WoW. More than any other gaming service (they also take a look at Steam), WoW’s chart is extremely interesting — it peaks solidly at 8pm every night, and then falls back down just as sharply around 11pm. In other words, the biggest audience for WoW (during this time period — this is over ten days in July of this year) is raiders, who show up on time at 8 and end the raid around 3 hours later. In

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Our very own Robin Torres is making the plunge into raiding and is looking for guides that help with the setup and use of the healing AddOn Grid. Being the resource nut that I am, I had a handful of links for her in two minutes. And now I share them with you: WoW.com guide to configuring Grid healing AddOn Video guide to configuring Grid How to configure Grid to track HoTs Grid configuration with extra plugins Some players prefer HealBot over Grid (here’s a good comparison of the two) and still others prefer AddOns that do more than just raid heal functionality (PitBull 4, though still in beta.)

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Not long after Tokyopop announced its 2010 schedule, which actually includes a late 2009 release, BlizzPlanet unveiled scans from the first chapter of Dan Jolley and Rocio Zucchi’s World of Warcraft: Death Knight. The story features Thassarian, an NPC first encountered in Ebon Hold and later in the Alliance airship flying above Icecrown. Jolley delves deeper into Thassarian’s past, telling his history as a human Alliance soldier with dreams of rising through the ranks but who eventually becomes ensnared under the Lich King’s employ. Intended to give insight into the different World of Warcraft classes, the Death Knight manga is the first of a series of class-focused full-length stories. Rocio Zucchi is a 22-year old Argentinian female manga artist, and her work on this book is simply sensational, if the first pages are any indication. Jolley employs a lot of flashbacks in the preview, and Zucci handles the storytelling transitions deftly. The book hits the shelves on December 1, 2009, and if you enjoyed Tokyopop’s take on the World of Warcraft universe, Death Knight looks to be an equally entertaining read.

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Sam Raimi spoke with MTV News about his upcoming Warcraft movie, and while he didn’t confirm (or deny, we guess) the whole subtitle thing, he did mention a new writer. Robert Rodat is apparently putting a screenplay together — he’s best known for writing Saving Private Ryan (and of course if we can get a Warcraft movie as good as that Spielbergian epic, we’ll all be happy), and he’s also penned Fly Away Home and The Patriot. Most recently, says his Wikipedia page, he did some work on 10,000 B.C., though if you saw that movie, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell, anyway — it was terrible. Raimi says he wants to stay faithful “to the Horde and the Alliance and the mythology that takes place in the game,” as well as “choose one or some of the lands that are portrayed in the game with as much accuracy and authenticity as possible.” He calls Rodat a great character writer, and says a great character-based story within the world of Azeroth is his goal. Sounds good. The picture above is the only art we’ve ever seen of the movie (it was presented at BlizzCon a few years ago), but since then, it sounds like the

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