Advertisement

The best of WoW.com: May 2009

May saw a huge influx of players to Ulduar, the end of the revamped Noblegarden holiday, Children's Week, BlizzCon ticket queues (which, while packed to the scuppers, were nowhere near the nightmare they'd been in 2008), and the start of news concerning patch 3.2 and new druid forms (!).

Disappointment with the patch 3.1 game world
: A lot of our staffers pointed to Alex's article as a good pinpoint on why patch 3.1 didn't feel like it was really moving the expansion forward.

Children's Week ruins battlegrounds: I hated School of Hard Knocks because I thought it was a poorly-designed achievement spurring irresponsible play. Zach hated it because it's also guaranteed to wreck battlegrounds for the length of the holiday.

Noblegarden: Sexy or Sexist?: Women are still vastly outnumbered by men in the MMO market, and Robin wonders whether this achievement going live was the right call.



Raid Rx: 10 clutch healing or tanking abilities: One of the most significant changes between Wrath and BC tanking has been the frequent appearance of tank-gibbing mechanics that demand the use of a cooldown. Matt Low takes you through the array of options available to you and how each option works.

WRUP: Live long and Ulduar edition
: Star Trek comes out. Editors log onto empty staffers' chat that weekend and type, "Where the hell is everyone?"

The PvP trinket is mandatory: Sad but true. As Zach observes, if you're serious about PvP, you need to get that trinket first.

Solving the mathematical tangles of Arpen: Blizzard had gone live with the actual formula used to calculate the armor penetration cap a few weeks earlier in an effort to straighten out the theorycrafting mess of the stat. Here, we take another look.

Failoc-alypse bursts onto the scene: Blizzard springs a new game on people waiting in the online queue for BlizzCon tickets. Small consolation to the people who watch 20,000 tickets vanish in minutes, but funny consolation nonetheless.

WoW Moviewatch Special: 7 movies you should know
: A rundown on 7 influential machinima films that showcases the genre's incredibly divergent styles.

15 Minutes of Fame: Boubouille proves an MMO Champion
: Almost everyone in the WoW community online depends on the incredible amount of work Boubouille puts into MMO Champion, but nobody really knew much about him until Lisa's interview.

Twitter Time: 10 words or less: Sacco posed a challenge to our followers on Twitter -- send him a WoW-related story in 10 words or less. I loved the resulting collection, and in particular the entry submitted by The CorruptOne: "An undead priest heals the shivering child's soul. Death smiles."

Completion rates on Wrath heroics
: Flyv crunches some numbers and confirms what people had suspected for a while -- most players hate Oculus.

The woes of block
: Block, since the removal of the crushing blow, has been a stat in search of relevance.

Should arena rankings be determined by class?
: Is it possible to make arena a bit fairer by, as GC says, "grading on a curve?"

New druid form art in patch 3.2: New Tauren and Night Elf bear forms were debuted within 48 hours of each other, thanks to an accidental leak of the latter that we jumped on. Allison cries.



2009's drawing to a close, and we're wrapping up the most interesting articles we've published all year, one day at a time. Join us every day for the next twelve days with this year's best of WoW.com!