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The best of WoW.com: June 9-16, 2009
Joystiq's sister site WoW.com covers the most popular MMO ever, World of Warcraft, every day of every week. Want to know what's new in Azeroth? Here's our biggest stories from the last seven days. News Upcoming mount changesRequired levels for mounts are being lowered, as are the costs for each. Isle of Conquest details releasedHot new deets on the game's upcoming battleground instance. Mountain Dew Battle-bots now liveMountain Dew released their promotional in-game items -- come and get 'em while they're... bot? New zeppelin and portals coming in Patch 3.2In addition to the mount updates, Blizzard is adding a new zep to ride and a portal straight to Outland. How convenient! Yogg Saron and Flame Leviathan nerfed tonightTwo Ulduar bosses get hit with the nerf bat. Features Guildwatch: He's really, really sorryDrama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. Ten things WoW players should know from E3Activision is bigger than ever, the MMO genre is widening, and wow, Star Wars: The Old Republic looks good. Addon Spotlight: Essential addons for raid leadersOur weekly column for UI addons examines some recommended installs for those leading raids. Popular scams and how to avoid themThere are scams aplenty in Azeroth, so here's some tips on how to dodge them. WoW, Casually: Tips for leveling on a PvP realmPlay on a player vs. player realm but don't want to die that often? Here's how to stay alive.
Breakfast Topic: What do you think of region-specific pets?
European gamers are not happy bunnies. Blizzard implemented rolling restarts to remove whatever bug had allowed gamers to get themselves a Battle Bot pet. Yes, they stood before European WoW players and said: 'No you shall not have a Bot' leaving them feeling unloved and bereft. It does kind of make sense though given Mountain Dew is almost unheard of in Europe.This is that first time that I can recall when Blizzard have made a non-combat pet region-exclusive. However with the promise of a Jade Green Panda (most likely a gift to compensate all the millions of Chinese players who have been without WoW for weeks during the transition from The9 to NetEase) I don't think it will be the last. So, dear readers, what do you feel about region-specific pets? Do you think they're a great idea to reward gamers in a specific region? Not got a Battle Bot and a feeling a little neglected? Do you think Blizzard should just give every players the ability to get a pet rather than make it region/account specific?
Mountain Dew Battle Bots now live
Mountain Dew Game Fuel, WoW-themed flavors of the popular beverage in red and blue (for the Horde and Alliance, respectively), is out in the wild, and at least one of our writers is already a big fan. To show how much they love you (or rather, to try to get you to buy their soda), Mountain Dew will give you a free in-game Battle Bot pet, just for clicking a button on their web site! The button is towards the lower-right, and it'll redirect you to log in to your Battle.net account. Don't worry, it's safe - you can tell by the Battle.net URL. He's a cute little guy. You can see a few screenshots I took in the gallery below. Apparently you get in-game fuel for your pet, again in red or blue, and when you fuel them up, they will fight opposite colors. If you give your pet blue fuel and the guy next to you gives it red, expect some robot-on-robot fighting action. I'm not sure if you have to get the appropriate fuel for your faction, since it seems you can only get one in-game item per day, and I already got my battle bot. I'll try it tomorrow and see how it goes. Edit: It looks like we've killed the Mountain Dew website. Keep trying though, it's bound to come back up sometime... Edit 2: The pet is mailed to all of your characters, so you don't have to decide which one gets it. %Gallery-65571%
Mountain Dew Game Fuel website revealed, counting down
We announced Mountain Dew Game Fuel quite awhile ago now, but it wasn't until recently that we've seen the official Game Fuel website. As you can see in the picture above, when you visit the site you're greeted with a countdown. The countdown says you can 'start earning tokens' when the countdown hits 0, which I assume means we'll be able to get our grubby nerd hands on the soda itself in just under 9 days. Unless they have some odd, magical way of gaining tokens beyond buying and drinking Game Fuel.Players with any interest in PC gaming or WoW swag at all will be pretty impressed with who they have on board for the prizes they'll supposedly be giving away every 15 minutes. J!NX handles most of the official WoW clothing, and Alienware... well, I've never actually used an Alienware product, but at least their stuff looks cool. That's a good thing, right?So far there's no evidence of those battle bots we saw being attached to the Game Fuel at all on that website, but there's that whole convoluted saying that's become so cliche over the years. The absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. We don't see it yet, but we may yet see it.[Thanks, Jeztur!]
New in-game battle bots connected to Mountain Dew?
Yesterday MMO-Champion posted a few new finds in the patch files. Namely a series of "Battle-bots" which act as a mini-pet. There's not many details as to what exactly they are or what they do, but it does look like there are several abilities we'll be able to control.Here's where it gets interesting. One bot state is blue, and one bot state is red. These blue and red colors match up pretty darn close to the Mountain Dew product that's on the horizon. Take a look after the break for side-by-side comparisons.But wait, there's more.
