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The best of WoW Insider: December 2013
And now we come to a close with the final entry in our Best of WoW Insider series. This was a slower month for editorial work in comparison to October and November, but a busier one for features and the arts scene. Thanks for hanging with us while we wrapped up the year, and we hope you'll stick around for whatever 2014 decides to bring. Happy New Year, everyone! Stay safe out there tonight and we'll see you back in Azeroth.
The best of WoW Insider: November 2013
November was packed. BlizzCon is always an event big enough to blow up the site, and recapping all of it for a year-in-review piece is just an exercise in futility. Let me just direct your attention to our BlizzCon 2013 tag and I'll pick out the most high-profile stuff behind the cut. Oh, and while this has nothing to do with WoW, I wanted to throw a shout-out to CarBot for the trailer to Heroes of the Storm at BlizzCon. If 1:22 doesn't make you burst out laughing, you have no soul.
The best of WoW Insider: October 2013
Another busy month! As you'd expect, more and more news related to BlizzCon picked up as October drew to a close, but this was also a heavy period for editorial work. We also had some of the best machinima of the year in October, and I'd like to draw some particular attention to The Phantom of the Battlegrounds. What a brilliant piece.
The best of WoW Insider: September 2013
Patch 5.4 went live on September 10th, and the month pretty much blew up from that point with an avalanche of editorials, art, predictions, and arguments. This and November were easily the busiest months of the year. The Know Your Lore column in particular went into overdrive in September analyzing what we found in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, but this month was an embarrassment of riches no matter where you looked.
The best of WoW Insider: August 2013
Patch 5.4 was gearing up to go live in early September, so it's not too surprising that August was dominated by the wait for both that and BlizzCon's approach. However, this turned out to be a very news-heavy months for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with the patch. Also, The Burdens of Shahao was released this month. More like this, Blizz!
The best of WoW Insider: July 2013
July was a very heavy month for news on the patch 5.4 PTR, but it sparked a lot of good discussion concerning the new Proving Grounds feature and where the story would finally end in Mists of Pandaria. This was also an excellent month for the Know Your Lore column.
The best of WoW Insider: June 2013
Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate! And for everyone, stay safe out there today, particularly if you have to be out and about in bad weather. June 2013 saw an avalanche of information off the patch 5.4 PTR, announcements of several upcoming features like connected realms and flex raiding, some class introspection over action-bar bloat, and unfortunately for Mobile Armory users, a successful hacking attempt.
The best of WoW Insider: May 2013
May was all about patch 5.3 news, heroic scenarios, Battlefield: Barrens, and (strangely enough) an awful lot of debate over whether WoW was too easy or not. Where did that come from? Oh, well. We also got crochet worgen and a lot of really nifty screenshots in Around Azeroth in May.
The best of WoW Insider: April 2013
News was pretty slow in the early part of the month as everyone settled to the task of working to unlock all of the Isle of Thunder's goodies and getting to Lei Shen. Things picked up as more information rolled off the patch 5.3 PTR. There were three pretty obvious themes in April that got a lot of play: The game's gearing model and how it could be improved, the lack of tanks and healers in the Throne of Thunder LFR, and what on earth was going on with the Alliance and its major lore figures.
The best of WoW Insider: March 2013
This is the fifth year that I've done the Best of WoW Insider series, and I have rarely encountered a month in which it was harder to cut so much out in pursuit of the "best." March 2013 was embarrassingly full of riches. I mean, any month in which a major patch drops is always interesting, but this one just had a tidal wave of great commentary, screenshots, art, and machinima. I apologize to everyone and everything that I had to leave out. The end of the month did get a bit quieter. I can't tell whether that's because players settled down a little to work on the content, or if it's because Bioshock: Infinite dropped on the 26th and everyone played themselves into a state of collapse.
The best of WoW Insider: February 2013
February 2013 was largely consumed with PTR work in anticipation of patch 5.2, and I'd be remiss not to mention the insane amount of work that Matticus did to get us up-to-date and accurate information on what to expect in the Throne of Thunder. Apart from that, February saw a run of great raid and guild recruitment videos in Moviewatch (not all of which I was able to include here, regrettably) and a noticeable streak of class-based introspection.
The Best of WoW Insider: January 2013
Welcome back to the Best of WoW Insider series! If you're new to WoW Insider, every December we run a retrospective series on the best articles from the previous year and/or those pieces that most ably captured the zeitgeist of the WoW community. There'll be one retrospective post each day through December 31st, so keep checking back as we count down. We start today with January 2013, which saw patch 5.2 reach the PTR for the first time. Like other months in which the current raid content is stale and we're waiting on new PTR news, it was a very busy month for opinion pieces and the art scene. The latter in particular saw one of the year's most popular videos debut at the end of the month. For some reason, GC also popped up in the news a lot this January.
The best of WoW Insider: January 2012
Marthazon: World of Warcraft is sort of like the French Foreign Legion of games when it comes to age. As long as you can do your part, it's rare for someone to ask "How old are you?" For anyone out there who's new to the site, at the end of every year we run a retrospective series examining the last 12 months and the articles that best captured the zeitgeist of the player community. You'll find one of these published every day through the end of 2012, assuming we don't all vanish into the nether on Dec. 21 (which I am inclined to doubt, as bills are due and nobody's that lucky). 2012 felt like a very introspective year for the game. Between the lack of a 2012 BlizzCon, Cataclysm's winding down, and the 9-month wait for Mists of Pandaria, players used the extra time to argue and probe into systems that most needed improvement. January was no exception, and this was a very chatty month for our staffers.
The Best of WoW Insider: December 2011
Bearheals: (on archaeology) The smallest distance between two points is a bunch of erratic zigzags. After patch 4.3 went live in late November, class columnists and commenters busied themselves with the new 5-mans and Dragon Soul raid. I think it's safe to say that Raid Finder problems have dominated December commentary. Players loved it as a feature, but they hated the various cheats that guilds used to get themselves to a four-piece tier bonus as quickly as possible, and they especially hated the outbreak of loot greed. More on this past the cut. That wraps up our look back at 2011, and I'm looking forward to a bright, happy, and hopefully less trees-falling-on-my-house-filled 2012, even if the world is apparently scheduled to come to a crashing halt next December. Happy New Year, everyone, and if you're out partying tonight, stay safe.
The Best of WoW Insider: October 2011
@Druidis4fite The AH Fee structure is a regressive tax on the poor. #OccupyGregStreet @Warcraft This movement doesn't seem to have a clear message. -- CM Lylirra As with all BlizzCon-related months, October was jam-packed and probably the busiest month of 2011 for the site. However, this bit of news belongs in a special category all its own: Hello and Goodbye. Dan O'Halloran, our fearless editor-in-chief and a mysterious figure who communicated largely through a series of lolcats, left to head up Tecca, and Alex Ziebart took the reins. Goodbye, farewell, and amen, Dan. By the way, the image you see above is Fox's response to Dan's email earlier this year about restarting the About the Bloggers series.
The Best of WoW Insider: September 2011
Curulan: Pigeon raid boss. I love it. GET ON THIS, BLIZZARD. September was pretty much all patch 4.3, all the time. The PTR didn't actually go live until close to the end of the month, but we definitely made up for lost time when it did. Transmogrification thoughts still dominated the site's more idle discussion -- who doesn't love cool-looking gear? -- but art-related talk kicked into high gear once everyone saw the visual proc off the new rogue legendary. That would go on to provide one of December's better jokes.
The Best of WoW Insider: August 2011
Candida: Knitting Grandmas would be an awesome guild name. Money, money, money, money. Money! August saw an avalanche of money and gold-related discussion as Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 would feature a real-money Auction House. Oh, and Blizzard registered Mists of Pandaria as a trademark, spurring an endless series of fights on what the hell was going on with that. And then it announced transmogrification and void storage, and we all forgot about pandas for a bit in the interest of farming old raids for some sweet-looking gear. And holy mother of God, Drama Mamas was on a roll this month.
The Best of WoW Insider: July 2011
Rekon13: To make you look at other gearing options, we've decided to remove other gearing options. July was a very busy month for the site. Patch 4.2 hit in late June and with it, the Molten Front, Firelands, and a slew of mechanics and policy changes for the game. The latter is something you'll see pop up in our news coverage quite a bit -- but for my money, the best news item from July 2011 concerned a theme park in China that was just too troublesome to license.
The Best of WoW Insider: June 2011
Merry Christmas to all those of you who celebrate! June 2011 was a pretty patch-oriented month. 4.2 was still on the PTR, and we slowly wound our way through the content there, writing as we went. As with patch 4.1, it was a late entrant in the month it debuted, so you'll see most of our commentary from the live servers in July.
The Best of WoW Insider: May 2011
Does WoW ever creep you out? NoYou Read trade for more than 20 seconds and you can make a strong case against evolution. CloakedDrifter The Goldshire inn on Moon Guard. *shudder* MattKrotzer It creeps me out that one of the quest writers has such a fascination with poop, and making us sift through it. This was a news-heavy month due to patch 4.1's dropping in late April and the quick arrival of patch 4.2 on the Public Test Realm. However, it was also a vibrant month for the arts scene, and WoW Archivist was en fuego in May. Did you know that Molten Core shipped with a third legendary? Don't lie.
