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The best of WoW Insider: May 5-12, 2009
Welcome back to the Wacky World of Warcraft, where the men are men, the women are usually dragons of some kind, and the average faction leader is probably being mad with some kind of ill-gotten power. Confused? Wondering why that ugly-looking orc is approaching you with sword drawn? Worry not, WoW Insider is your all-encompassing guide to Azeroth. Just please keep your arms and legs inside the tram at all times -- you don't want to hear what happened to our friend Wirt. News WoW Insider interviews Tom Chilton on Patch 3.1 and beyondWe talk to the game's lead designer on the latest updates, and what's coming up next. Star Trek references in the World of WarcraftWe've all (well, most of us -- ahem, Alex and Dan) seen Star Trek and loved it, so we compiled this little list of sightings in game. WoWMatrix responds to Curse and WoW InterfaceThere was a kerfluffle in the addon scene lately, and popular addon updater WoWMatrix finally responds. BlizzCon tickets on sale May 16thBlizzard's convention is returning to the Anaheim Convention Center, and it'll cost you $125 and some time in line to go. Flying in old world AzerothBlizzard has long said it wouldn't be possible to allow flying mounts in the original game world. And here's why. Features Disappointment the patch 3.1 game worldNot everything is hunky dory after the latest update -- at least one of our bloggers is a bit bored. Officers' Quarters: FragmentationOur column for guild officers takes a look at who should get the game's newest legendary. The OverAchiever: Glory of the Hero strikes backHow to do one of the biggest achievements in the game. WoW, Casually: Guide to the latest featuresNot every WoW player is a hardened veteran -- for the newer folks, there's WoW, Casually. Arcane Brilliance: PvPing as a Fire Mage after patch 3.1What's new in the world of Mages? Our Mage blogger Christian Belt tells you.
[1.Local]: To agree, to disagree, or to agree to disagree
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.Flamers and trolls aside, WoW Insider readers are generally a contentious lot. Their viewpoints are as divergent as the player demographics the site attracts – all types of players, from the casual to the hardcore. With this many angles to consider, WoW Insider becomes a melting pot of ideas and opinions, from the sublime to the ridiculous. (And let's face it – some of the so-called ridiculous ideas are the most entertaining to read.) Yet this week, readers seemed to be more often of one mind than not – whether that agreement was ultimately to agree over the topic at hand or to agree to disagree. [1.Local] highlights several reader conversations that made the radar this week.
MMOUI Minion is coming
With all this talk about the Curse client and WoWMatrix, it's easy to forget that another major player is entering the scene soon (™): MMOUI Minion, from the people at WoWInterface. According to the FAQ for the forthcoming client, the target date for open beta testing is May 17, 10 days from today. Here are some salient points about Minion: Will work on Windows, Mac and Linux. Has an option to auto-update, set to "off" by default. There will be a premium version, but the only difference will be that premium users don't see ads. In contrast to the Curse client, the non-premium version of Minion is not crippled, and will have an update-all button and full download speed. If an author enables donation requests, they will show up in the updater.
WoWMatrix responds to Curse and WoW Interface
I thought the whole Curse and WoW Interface vs WoWMatrix scuffle was over, but the people at WoWMatrix have just fired back an "FAQ" giving their side of the story. I put FAQ in quotes because I'm not sure these are frequently asked questions so much as questions Matrix frequently wants to answer, but that's OK. I like the format. Here is the situation as they put it: The Matrix people are respecting Curse/WI's demands that they quit using Curse/WI bandwidth, so as of now you can only get addons through WM that are hosted on the WM servers. They are hosting addons on their servers that the authors asked to be hosted there, or that are distributed under a free license (such as the GPL) that allows such re-hosting.
The best of WoW Insider: April 14-21, 2009
Patch 3.1 has been out for a week now in the World of Warcraft (in fact, patch 3.1.1 is coming out today), and players have tons to do -- we're all raiding Ulduar, playing around with dual specs, and leveling up through the Argent Tournament to become Champions of our own factions. In fact, there's a lot of new stuff in World of Warcraft, so if it ever gets overwhelming, worry not -- Joystiq's WoW Insider has you covered. Here's our most popular posts in the past week. News WoW Insider's Guide to the Argent TournamentIt's joustin' time in the World of Warcraft. Here's what you need to know. WoW Insider's Patch 3.1 FAQFrequently asked questions about last week's patch, answered just for you. Ghostcrawler on the mechanics behind Armor PenetrationOne of the game's devs talks about one of the tougher damage dealing mechanics to figure out. First day for Champions on the Argent TournamentThe very first class of Champions arises. Curse, WoW Interface band together to block WoWMatrixA small shakeup in the addon world leaves a few players hanging right around patch day. Features Wrath 101: Emalon the Storm WatcherThere's a new boss in the Wintergrasp Vault, and here's a quick guide to taking him down. The Queue: Service with a smileYou ask, we answer. That's how it works. How to get the Turtle MountWant to get your hands on the brand new aquatic mount? Here's a few tips. How to activate Ulduar's hard modesSure, anybody can raid Ulduar. But can you do it on hard mode? Lichborne: Top Death Knight DPS builds and patch 3.1With dual specs out, everybody wants to know which builds are best. Our Death Knight column breaks down which talent points to look for in patch 3.1.
Curse, WoW Interface band together to block WoWMatrix
WoWMatrix is a program of dubious morality. It sucks down bandwidth from sites like Curse and WoWInterface like crazy, and displays its own ads while doing so. It does, however, work like a charm. So it is with mixed feelings that I report that Curse and WoW Interface have gotten their heads together and figured out a way to keep WoWMatrix from accessing their files, which means WoWMatrix is of little use going forward. The idea is that we will now use the official tools provided by those sites: Curse Client from Curse, and an updater that is still in the works for WoW Interface. Unfortunately, the Curse Client for Mac is a work of pure evil uses a lot of obtrusive and non-standard interface elements, as well as being pretty unstable, so I'm not a huge fan of it; I'm not sure how the Windows version stacks up. It also didn't find about half of my addons, including some that I know are on the Curse site, like ClearFont2. Furthermore, the WoW Interface updater, the only other game in town as far as I can see, appears to have been in limbo for quite some time. So although I recognize that WoWMatrix was putting a drain on the sites, I'm sad that there is no longer a pleasant way for me to update all of my addons, and at best (when the WI updater is released) I'll need to run two separate programs to do the work that WoWMatrix used to do on its own. But if that's what had to happen for Curse and WI to keep their doors open, that's what had to happen.
Tracking Arena matches with Gnomewarrior
Gnomewarrior, a site devoted to tracking Arena matches, has a growing database of over 23,000 Arena matches contributed by over 400 players. It's a pretty small player sampling right now, but the match data that the site shows are pretty interesting. Even with a small overview, visitors can check out specific Arena teams (that have contributed their data) and details on their matches such as match duration, their Team Rating, the maps they fought on, and the all-important team compositions. Mousing over a class icon will show that player's spec, which is extremely useful.Arena enthusiasts looking to contribute should download ArenaHistorian from WoW Interface and upload their data on Gnomewarrior. The mod itself tracks pretty much everything in an Arena match such as the "exact race, gender, talents, healing and damage done for both the enemy arena team and yours, along with which map it was in, how long it took and if you won or lost." It's a lot of data, and as with all databases, the more data you've got, the better. Gnomewarrior collects all that data and makes it extremely searchable, allowing visitors to search for how teams or even how certain class / specs performed.Perhaps we'll see tools that will parse the data, like finding out the average time for matches depending on the brackets and maps (glossing over the lists, for example, it looks like most matches last from 3-6 minutes). It's also interesting to see how certain -- sometimes oddball -- comps do against others. As it is now, it's interesting enough to browse through and visualize the tons of matches they display. With a big enough sampling, I'm looking forward to Gnomewarrior working alongside other sites like Realm History's Arena Statistics in becoming a valuable resource for analyzing Arena play.
WoWInterface to raffle off WoW programming books
Ever wanted to make your mark in the WoW community? Want to see your handiwork featured in our Reader UI of the Week? Or maybe you've always dreamed of an frameset with a Hello Kitty theme?Well, WoWInterface's new raffle might just give you that chance. WoWInterface is an addon download site, brought to you by the parent company that runs Allakhazam, Thottbot, and Wowhead. They announced yesterday in their forums that every Sunday for the next five weeks they'll be raffling off two copies of World of Warcraft Programming: A Guide and Reference for Creating WoW Addons. And, no, it's not some dusty old tome they are trying to unload because Mom wants them to clean up their rooms. The book was published May 5, 2008, less than a month ago. It normally lists for $39.99, so this is a great way to get started on your new addon-writing career and save some money at the same time. Or just get something for free and make some stuff.The best part is, even though the book's authors are addon pros James Whitehead II, Matthew Orlando and Bryan McLemore, this book is written in such a way that you need no programming knowledge to get started writing your own WoW addons. To enter the raffle, all you need to do is register for a WoW Interface account and make sure your real email address is on your account. They'll be pulling the winners from the list of members. For more details, see the raffle rules.Good luck and write some good addons for us to review!
A new way to search for WoW mods
You know how it is. One of your favorite addons breaks down completely after a patch, so you go looking for the updated version, but then you realize you don't remember where you downloaded it. You check your favorite mods website, only to find that they only have the out-dated version. You end up having to check several different websites in order to find the update, and you wish there were a better way.KitKatsFTW over in Europe has developed a simple solution: a site called "WoW Mod Search," which uses Google's custom engine to search through the four main WoW mod sites: WoW UI, WoW Interface, Curse, and WoWAce. The site is simple, unobtrusive, and aside from some google text ads, there's absolutely nothing to get in your way.I use Inquisitor on Safari to quickly use shortcuts of any search engine without actually visiting the website itself first. If any of you out there are also using Inquisitor, or any similar search plugin, you should be able to just copy and paste this search url into your plugin preferences as a shortcut for quick access to WoW Mod Search later. (The "%@" in that link represents the space that will be replaced with your searched keywords when you use the plugin.)
AddOn Spotlight: WoW UI Updater
Here's something I've been looking for for a long time! It's not an addon itself, but it does make the management and upkeep of your addons a lot simpler. Cairnehoof of Dethecus (US) sent this in to Mike, who kindly sent it my way: I read your article on wowinsider (big fan btw) about the addon issue in the upcoming patch. I have come across an great application for windows that updates your addons from all the popular sites. Maybe you could share it on the site. I know many people would love it. It's alot better than the one offered on ui.worldofwar.net because it not just download from one site. It is maintained on sourceforge.net and does not contain any malicious code. (I scanned with 3 different anti-virus programs and a anti-spyware one) heres the link if you want to take a look: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wuu So, armed with that information, I set off to explore WUU.
