World of Warcraft Gold Guide

BoP Weapons for blacksmithing?  Weaponsmith BoP Weapon Plans: (Requires Weaponsmith to craft and to equip) Corroded Saronite Edge [415] 1H Sword (208-388) 114.4 dps, Speed 2.6, +50 Agility, +21 Stamina, +28 Expertise, +14 Hit, +60 Attack Power, Requires Weaponsmith, Level 78 (Rare, BoP) Materials: 16 Saronite Bars, 1 Crystalline Fire Corroded Saronite Woundbringer [415] 1H Sword (144-269) 114.4 dps, Speed 1.8, +28 Agility, +21 Stamina, +14 Expertise, +50 Hit, +60 Attack Power, Requires Weaponsmith, Level 78 (Rare, BoP) Materials: 14 Saronite Bars, 1 Crystalline Fire Saronite Mindcrusher [415] 2H mace (428-644) 148.8 dps, +88 Strength, +57 Stamina, +38 Critical Strike, +25 Hit, Requires Weaponsmith, Level 78 (Rare, BoP) Materials: 20 Saronite Bars, 2 Crystalline Fire

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 World of Warcraft as a teaching tool Most of us were kids at one point. A portion of us probably played computer or video games even as kids. Thus, I’m sure that at least a good handful of us, when told by our parents to turn off the computer and go do homework, eat dinner, or get some fresh air, tried to counter with something like this: “But Mom, games are educational! They give you hand-eye coordination and map reading skills!” Now, all these years later, it seems we may finally be getting some backup from teachers and educators. recently highlighted some educators who are using World of Warcraft or lauding it for its educational values.Educator Constance Steinkuehler of the University of Wisconsin-Madison started an after school WoW playing group for young boys. She’s found that these 8th and 9th graders, who had no interesting in reading or writing, now get into detailed and lengthy discussions on raid strategy and gearing up and the like on their message boards. They also meet one Saturday a month for more involved projects such as maintaining the guild website or putting together graphic novels based on their Warcraft adventures, which provides

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Scattered Shots: On Roleplaying a Hunter Welcome to Scattered Shots, a weekly column on all things Hunter related, now written by Daniel Whitcomb. I may have mentioned this before elsewhere, but often times it’s hard to speak authoritatively on any class in Beta, because no matter what the changes and the new imba combos and whatnot are right now, they will likely change drastically the next time a new build comes into play. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible to write about them, but often times whatever words you write will be obsolete, or at least inaccurate, by the time you sit down to write next week’s column. For example, last week I wrote about traps. I mentioned that Freezing Traps no longer break immediately on damage. Well, now they do again. As Ghostcrawler tells it, they couldn’t find a way to make pets automatically ignore a frozen target, so they called the whole thing off. Now, honestly, that seems a bit like chopping off your hand to take care of a mosquito bite on your pinky finger, but hey. On the plus side, she also said that they’ll put it back in once they figure out how to reign in pets (I recommend using the passive

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Key items and tabards out of the bags soon, says Tigole Tigole has gotten over his little weekend rampage on the forums and gotten back to business: he’s got two tidbits about a popular subject among most players: making more bag space available. First up is tabards — he says that there are no plans to move tabards from the bags to the UI (as with the pet and mount changes), but that players shouldn’t worry too much, because Blizzard is making it easier for players to get lost and destroyed tabards back if necessary. Since the Championing mechanic means we won’t have to wait till Exalted to get tabards, there’ll be a tabard vendor in Dalaran that’ll have most of the tabards you need at a relatively cheap price. And “keys” that aren’t keys are also mentioned — by this, we mean things like the Scepter of Celebras or the Mallet of Zul’Farrak; attunement items, in other words. Tigole says there’s a plan for these also (another “keychain” tab, maybe?), but that we won’t see it in time for the expansion. Good news on both ends for people short on bag space, even if we have to wait a while.

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Arcane Brilliance: How long will my gear last me?   Each week, Arcane Brilliance emerges from the sewers beneath Dalaran, weary from dueling (and winning!) over and over in the Circle of Wills, to deliver to you a column about Mages. What’s that you say? What good are sewers in a floating city? Where does all the sewage go? Does the city drift over the countryside, forever trailing a series of sewage waterfalls? Ah, but you forget: Dalaran is a city of Mages! Even our poo is magical. After reading our own Adam Holisky’s excellent post on upgrading tanking shields in Wrath, I decided I wanted to know how long my Mage’s gear would last in the frozen north. It’s a fair question, and I suspect a common concern. We’ve worked hard for our shiny epics–either by raiding like crazy or grinding for honor or Arena points, and often a bit of both–and the thought of leaving them behind in one of the expansion’s first zones for some green quality item that drops off a random mob is a little bit depressing. We want to feel–in these last months before Wrath arrives–as if our efforts have not been in vain. If we’re still

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Addon Spotlight: Mac Dual-boxing 2 Macros Here is where you start laying the foundation for the slave’s interaction with the master. I spent time writing macros that enabled the slave to assist the master. Each combat and healing ability I use regularly on my slave (a Balance Druid) has an associated macro to assist the focus target. (Which I designate at the beginning of gameplay as my master.) Here are a couple of examples of macros I am using. /assist focus /startattack I use this when I don’t really need much help and want to regen mana via /target focus /cast Regrowth One of the healing spells cast on the master /target Self /cast Regrowth Slave heals himself   /follow focus Used to facilitate both toons moving together /assist focus /cast Starfire A basic macro to cast a variety of offensive spells (Starfire in this case) /drink /eat /dance A few basic administrative-type abilities plus the Moonkin dance for laughs. (Note that these three are different macros.) Once you’ve written macros to correspond to the abilities and/or actions for your slave, you’ll want to lay them out in the slave’s UI and bind them to bindings not used by your

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 Breakfast Topic: What would you wish for? Today’s breakfast topic is a bit of a roleplaying question as well. Yesterday we heard about the new coins that were added to the water fountain at Dalaran in the Beta of Wrath of the Lich King. There, usinging your fishing skill, you can find coins tossed in by anyone from King Terenas Methenil to “Prince” Magni Bronzebeard, and see what it was that they once wished for. It got me thinking, what would your character wish for if you could toss a coin into the fountain? Even if you don’t roleplay, just imagine it for a moment. Or if that’s really too much of a stretch for you, imagine that you the player could stand at the edge of that fountain and toss a coin in. Would your wish be any different from a fountain in the real world somewhere? Would you wish for epics, PvP glory, class buffs or something else related to your real life? Even though my main character is a hunter, and war has kind of become her business, she’s still a pacifist at heart. She always tries to disable her enemies rather than kill them, and she silently prays to the Light for the soul each person to cross her path, whether

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WoW Insider Show tomorrow afternoon on WoW Radio   We have a confession to make — this week’s WoW Insider Show has already been recorded. I know, I know, we really enjoy getting on IRC and doing the show live, too, but Duncor the (so-called) Dependable is heading out to a wedding this weekend, and since he’s our producer, we had to fudge things a little bit, and we recorded the show last night. Worry not, though — we’ll still be playing the show for the first time on Saturday afternoon at 3:30 over on WoW Radio, and if I’m around, I’ll try to jump into IRC to chat while we listen. The good news is that we finally have some good Mage talk in the show — blogger Andy “Aurdon” Scott of ISheep joined us on the show, and if you’ve been waiting to hear some good discussion about the food-and-drink dispensers of the world, you’ll hear it. John “BigBearButt” Patricelli was also on with us with his great insight as always, and Duncor came on as well (Turpster is still jetlagged from his trip to the States and will be back next week). And in addition to all the Mage talk, we talked about the release date

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Instant Corruption and other infernal joys   Hot on the heels of Blizzard asking Warlocks for feedback on Metamorphosis, the Wrath development team shows how amazingly fast they work and how they actually listen to players. Koraa and Ghostcrawler materialized into the Warlock Beta forums to announce — simultaneously on separate threads — that Metamorphosis was going to change significantly in an upcoming Beta build, with the changes happily incorporating most of the feedback that players threw in. First of all, Metamorphosis will no longer replace a summoned demon — a no-brainer feature that should have been there from the start considering that most talents in the tree buff up the Warlock’s demon! It will also now increase armor by 600%, up from 360%, a coefficient that scales better with a Warlock’s base armor of… cloth. Significantly, the demon form will now also increases all damage by 40%, after players realized that turning into a demon with many melee abilities and being cut off from normal spells actually reduced their DPS. Speaking of normal spells, Warlocks in demon form can now cast those, too. These changes come in addition to a

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arenas are the dumbest form of PvP currently available   I think arenas are the dumbest form of PvP currently available, and the only reason I’ve ever participated is for the welfare epics. Obviously those with high ratings didn’t get their points for free. They got them through twitch reflexes, good talent builds, good group composition, and good gear. Those without high ratings still got free epics.   The only interesting form of PvP in my opinion are the battlegrounds when played by organized teams. This is where strategy and execution can outweigh gear and group composition. Being in the right place at the right time is key. The most satisfying PvP experience I ever had occurred last week when by chance a pre-made I was leading in AB came up against a pre-made from one of the prominent horde guilds from our server. It was a hard battle the entire match, with us coming from behind to win by 10 points. 10 points in an AB made possible by a cap in the last 20 seconds! It was epic. Especially when we all rode over to the horde queuing area in Shat afterward and waved at the other team.   Given this, I hardly care that my hunter sucks in arena, because she is

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