Mike D'Anna

Buying Guides

Buying Guides By Mike D'Anna

Some Handy Gold-Making Guides

I'm always hesitant to post links to the various gold-making guides on the net, simply because manyt of them are on questionable sites, seem to lean towards straight-ahead farming, or if they are legitimate (i.e. don't advocate exploits or other shady behavior), still aren't really all that useful to the everyday player who wants to make gold legitimately as they play the game, not neccessarily to the exclusion of everything else. I have found a couple, however, that I think are pretty handy.For beginning players, this guide posted recently over at societyofgamers is something I would have really liked to read when I was just starting out in WoW. It's very basic, and isn't anything a seasoned player wouldn't be able to tell you, but for newcomers to the game, it gives the basics of the major professions, the auction house, and other scources of income & gives a few helpful tips about each.For more seasoned players, another handy guide is Cthulhu's Gold Making Guide, posted over at Allakhazam. It's semi-Horde-centric (that's a hyphen-hat-trick, by the way), but it has some really useful tips for specific areas & quests that will allow you to rack up some loot. I used this one a lot when I was leveling my first character.Have any of you come across any useful guides or perhaps written your own? I'd ask readers to send in their tips, but nobody ever wants to give away their gold-making secrets. Lousy capitalism....

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

New RP and RP-PvP Servers Today?

There has been buzz on the forums & in-game for the last day or so about a new Role Play server and, more notably, a new Role Play-PvP server opening either today or tomorrow. I say notably because this will be the first new RP-PvP realm since the opening of Lightninghoof back in the fall, I believe it was.There has been no announcement yet on the official WoW homepage, but there is a thread regarding the issue on the official Blizzard forums, and the response from the boys in blue when asked if & when the new servers were coming was that "They are currently scheduled for tomorrow (Wed), but that may slip to Thursday". I'd say that sounds like confirmation to me.I'm an RP-PvP kind of guy, so this is exciting news for me. I'll be rolling Horde on the as-yet unnamed new realm, anyone else planning to?

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News

News By Mike D'Anna

At War With the Dawn

I really hope I never get this bored...Then again, your options do get pretty limited once you reach level 60; the same raids & dungeon crawls over & over, the endless grinding for reputation. Or you can do what this guy did, and just say to hell with it all & declare war on the Argent Dawn. And he photoblogged the whole thing over at notaddicted.com.Yes, I guess it can be pretty annoying to other players when quest NPC's & the like are killed...especially by members of your own faction. But after all, that 'at war' tab IS there for a reason, is it not? It would be a shame to let it just go unused forever...or not.In any case, it's something I would never do or never hope to encounter, but it does make for some funny reading over your cornflakes....

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Lag Monster Respawns Again

As you have all probably noticed, and as we've been reporting, there has been a mysterious increase in the amount of server downtime lately, with official "maintenances": being scheduled with little notice & players becoming incresingly more disgruntled as visions of outages from months past creep back into their brains like carrion worms...I guess it was only a matter of time before the ubiquitous "SERVER OUTAGES CAUSE MASS CHAOS" news posts started to creep up, and Gamespot is one of the first major sites to renew the scrutiny.Apparently, the official story from Blizzard is that server upgrades in June, undertaken to increase stability, have in fact done the exact opposite, and let loose some more ghosts in the machine. There is an official thread on the subject over at the Blizzard forums as well, with plenty of rabid responses to the boys in blue. Have you all noticed the recent increase in downtime? Has it affected your playtime? Does it seem as bad as it was before? Chime in...

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PC Gaming By Mike D'Anna

45 Minutes or your Strat Run is Free...

No, I didn't come up with the clever Domino's Pizza analogy, but in the latest Weekly WoW over at Video Game Generation, they claim that the possibility of a pick-up group successfully completing a 45-minute Strat run is about as guaranteed as that old pizza gimmick that went the way of the dodo. The focus this time is on the Dungeon 2 armor sets, the problems with them, and basically the lack of fitting items for the casual endgamer. I'm probably more on the casual side of the player fence myself (at least compared to some), and as I'm just entering the endgame again with my latest character, I have to say I have been a bit frustrated at the sheer amount of grinding & raiding that I will have to endure to procure the gear that I've been eying. Then again, I don't expect Blizzard to just hand it to me, either...In any case, there are a lot of good points raised in the article, so check it out...

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PC Gaming By Mike D'Anna

WoW Moviewatch: The Warlock & the Warrior

With all the parodies & ridiculous movies people crank out using WoW, it's almost rare to see someone trying to make an actual fantasy short for a change. This is a well-made little flick that gets bonus points from me for paying homage to The Sword & the Sorceror, possibly the coolest movie of my childhood...

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WoW Coming to the Philippines Soon

In the next step in their plan for world domination, INQ7.net reports today that the Philippines is the latest market being targeted by Vivendi/Universal for expansion of the WoW franchise. Gerry Castro, vice president of Asian Media Development Group, the company that handles Vivendi/U's lisences in the Philippines, says "Yes, the game will be in the Philippines soon; that we've been planning to bring this game to the country; that we have looked to several IDCs that will host the game"AMDG is currently seeking partners to assist in hosting, supporting, and maintaining the game within the country, and claims that a "massive plan" is underway to bring WoW to the Philippines with a vengeance. No word on whether players from any other parts of the world will be able to access the Philippino servers, but seeing as it will be a self-contained entity of sorts, it seems unlikely> In any case, chalk up one more X on the big world map for Blizzard...

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Blizzard to Venture Further into Console World?

Even though we've heard Blizzard announce time & again that there will be no World of Warcraft for the XBox 360 or any other consoles, a new job listing on Blizzard's website for a Senior Producer position, with one of the requirements listed as having "a proven track record in producing high-quality console games", has some gamers hopeful again that WoW may indeed surface on one of their favorite consoles.The ad also specifies that the idea candidate must have "recently shipped at least one AAA game in a producer role for one of these console platforms: Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, or GameCube.", so apparently they're looking to cast a wide net, whatever their plans might be. Personally, I'm not much of a console gamer, but I still can't imagine any way WoW could truly ever work on a console, at least without the addition of a mouse & keyboard; there's simply too much typing to do. Perhaps there's a way to accomplish this that I don't know about, but I just can't see one being able to have the true WoW experience in a console setting. Then again, what do I know?

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PC Gaming By Mike D'Anna

New Look Online for WoW Website

The official Blizzard World of Warcraft site has a new look today, as they have finally switched over to their new template, as they announced earlier. The new design looks to be a huge improvement over the old one, but that's less a testimony to the designer's skills than to the fact that their previous website was simply one of the worst professional video game websites I've ever seen...I guess it wasn't the design of it really, as much as the fact that the darn thing just never seemed to work. It seems (on my end, anyway) like every time the game servers have any trouble, the website goes down as well...which is the first place most people are going to go if the game servers are down. Oh well, let's hope the new website is more reliable.What do you guys prefer? New or old?

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News

News By Mike D'Anna

Mid-Midsummer Fire Report

Well, the festival of Midsummer Fire has been going on for a while now, and I have to admit, I basically forgot about it after about a day...Oh, I took the quests to seek out the fires throughout the lands, and I did get that really nifty Cinder Elemental that saved my butt a couple of times, and some nice experience, but all in all, my opinion on the event so far has been...blah.For one thing, I'm tired of Stormwind looking all dingy & smoky. This is one of the reasons I stopped spending so much time in Orgrimmar; the air is almost thicker in the game than in my room...and that's saying something.What about you folks? Have you enjoyed the event so far? Should Blizzard make this an annual occurrence? Chime in...

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PC Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Easter Eggs in WoW

I love discovering little hidden references in games, and during my time playing WoW, I've spotted a fair amount of in-jokes, from the various Goblins named after USS Enterprise crew members, to the Friday the 13th homage in Ellwyn Forest. The guys over at Blizzplanet, however, have done their homework far better than me. They've compiled an enormous list of easter eggs to be found throughout Azeroth, some of which I now realize that I had seen, but never made the connection before. For example, the Psycho-themed names in the Undercity I should have gotten right away; I'm dissappointed in myself. And who'd have thought they'd squeeze in so many Thundercats references?

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WoW Moviewatch: South Park in Anvilmar

If the name South Park in the title doesn't tip you off, before you yell at me, this video is NOT work safe! It is proof, however, that Eric Cartman's voice coming out of just about anything is funny. In any case, check it out.

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

A Slew of Essays on WoW

Now this is something that could potentially provide endless debate fodder. While stumbling around the web, I came across this page; a collection of term papers written by undergraduates at San Antonio's Trinity University for the class "Games for the Web: Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer On-line Games".The subjects addressed include "Sexism in WoW", "Real World Transactions of Digital Items from MMOGs", "The Prisoner's Dilemma and Factional Conflict in World of Warcraft", and my personal favorite, the oh-so-socially relevant "Wizards vs. Engineers: The Rumble in the Proverbial Jungle". There are several others covering a wide-range of topics; I haven't had the time to read them all yet, but since I eat this stuff up, I might not get much work done today.Of course, the real question this begs is: why couldn't assignments have been this cool when I was in school? Do you have any idea how severely the nuns would have beat me if I had asked to write my term paper on a video game?*sigh*

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Chinese Gamers Laugh in the face of Addiction

Somewhere, Boris Badenov is laughing over his dinner of roast moose.The ever-trusting Chinese government, which last year created legislation to erase the freedom of....er, I mean restrict the playing time of online gamers to less than five hours per week, has recently learned to its dismay that up to 14% of players have taken measures to circumvent the restrictions, such as setting up multiple accounts in games such as WoW. Slashdot reports today that the next step for the lovable autocratic regime is to launch a massive campaign over the summer to ban minors from internet cafes. I suppose they don't really care if the adults are addicted; you know, the ones who are actually supposed to keep society running as smooth as a sweat shop. In any case, I'm honestly surprised that the percentage of folks bucking the system is so low. If this were a domestic issue, I'd like to think that gamers would be rioting in the streets. But then again, that's never worked out so well in China....

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Minor Patch Released

If you logged onto WoW yesterday, you're already aware that the latest version of the game has been updated to 1.11.1 (I'm only writing something in parenthesis here to allay the confusion that the period at the end of this particular sentence might cause).For those of you both curious & lazy, here are the updated patch notes:Fixes softlock issues.General* The Looking For Group channel is now global.* Escape Artist now displays a message in the combat log when it fails.PvP* Significant changes to the battleground Deserter debuff. The debuff should no longer be applied to characters incorrectly.Druid* The Omen of Clarity talent now lasts 10 minutes. The tooltip does not yet correctly reflect the new longer duration, and will be updated in a future patch.Mage* Evocation - Cool down reduced to 8 minutes.* Pyroblast - Cool down removed.Shaman* Frostbrand and Flametongue weapon buffs are benefited by +spell damage.Too bad that first sentence doesn't read 'no longer' instead of 'now', huh? And why are they announcing that twice? Just to rub it in our face? Lousy LFG channel...get out of my head.

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Character Transfer Affecting Add-Ons?

In the wake of the paid character transfer service going live recently, a few players have apparently been experiencing some issues with their custom interfaces & add-ons after transferring their characters. Reader Sean Bonner reports that after his characters' move to the Eitrigg realm yesterday, he has been having many add-on problems, and this post over at Metroblogging also reports similar issues."6 months worth of interface development and addon fine tuning is UP IN SMOKE. When I started up...on Eitrigg all my custom interface, addons and macro preferences got left behind on Stormrage, or at least in the Stormrage folder. I figured out how to move my macro files over and now all 60 of my macros are available. But, I can't figure out which addon .lua files to move to restore my add-on preferences. I've made copies and dropped them in all the folders I can think of with no luck." Have any of you who have also transferred your characters experienced any problems after the move? Blizzard, any news on why this might be occurring? Chime in if you have any info on this problem; hopefully this can be brought to Blizzard's attention & the issues addressed.

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Yet Another Article on Gaming Addiction

Because I just can't get enough of this subject, the Dallas Morning News has an article online today about the by-now-familiar subject of online gaming addiction. Remember the article we linked to a few weeks back about the Amsterdam Clinic that had opened a program for gaming addicts? Well, they're not the only mental health professionals who are addressing the problem. This article contains quotes from several other workers in the field who claim that the number of instances of 'technology addiction' (the catch-all umbrella that gaming addiction apparently falls under) is on the rise, with no end in sight. Dr. John O'Neil of Houston sums things up with a telling quote:"In a way, the Internet is like Las Vegas," he said. It offers anything you want; it seems like the perfect place to cut loose for anonymous fun; and it's open 24 hours a day."My opinion on the subject is the same as it's always been: anything can be harmful if one becomes too deeply involved in it, and there are many other factets of the internet that can be just as all-consuming to the easily-addicted: chat rooms, online gambling, and, of course our old friend pornography are all things that can cause disruption in one's life if they are indulged in to excess. Of course, people have been addicted to sex & gambling for centuries; this whole video game thing is still pretty much uncharted territory. Maybe that's why I find this stuff so fascinating...or maybe I just like to read about people who make me look less addicted...

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Character Transfer Controversy Continues

The announcement that Blizzard will now be offering paid character transfers for $25 has been met with more than a little controversy within the community. Many people, including many who have commented on it here, feel that Blizzard is milking customers out of more money for a service that they could easily provide for free. Others defend Blizzard's descision, claiming that the character transfer fee is nothing more than a way to discourage players from moving servers willy nilly in a never-ending game of musical realms, which I happen to agree with.If players were allowed to freely transfer between servers as often as they wished, then it could potentially open up a huge can of worms; one scenario I can imagine is players possibly griefing or otherwise causing problems on one server, only to move to another when they wind up on too many peoples 'ignore' lists. What about you readers? How many of you are planning to take advantage of the transfer service? Why have you chosen to move realms? population? Friends on other realms? Want to start anew with a fresh reputation? Let us know...

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PC Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Why Am I Addicted to WoW?

No...not me; I know why I'm addicted...'cus it's a flippin' sweet game. And because I've been an avid RPG'er all my life, and WoW is simply the logical progression of that. No, the person asking that question is in fact the author of this article over at flickrgaming, a relative WoW 'noob' (sorry for using the 'n' word) who has found themselves hopelessly addicted to the game we all know & love.The atricle gives some insight into just what the appeal of WoW is to a casual gamer, comparing the learning curve & playing experience to the much more demanding world of online RTS's (real-time strategy games) to illustrate just how impressive a job Blizzard has done in making it's flagship product accessible to not only the 40+ hour per week raiding guild member, but the relative newcomer to the genre as well. It's an interesting & well-thought out read; check it out at this link, and let us know just what it is that keeps YOU addicted to WoW....

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Rob Pardo on The Burning Crusade

Computerandvideogames.com has posted an interview with Blizzard VP Rob Pardo in which he discusses the eagerly-awaited Burning Crusade expansion pack. Aside from the usual questions (What's the new level cap? What about the new races?, etc.), Pardo also gives some insight into his background as a game tester, and offers his opinion on WoW's economy spilling over into the real world with players buying & selling items for real cash (he doesn't like it).No earth-shattering revelations here, but the most exciting bit of information in my book is Pardo's claim that PvP will be expanded in Burning Crusade to include the much-rumored contested PvP zones, which will allow the controlling faction access to new flight paths & more. Great news for those of us who shun the battlegrounds, and long for a return to the days of world-PvP. You can read the full interview right here.

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

On Quitting WoW

Burnout: it happens to the best of us, even with the best of games. And with a game like WoW, where you can literally whittle away hours upon days upon weeks of your time trying to advance, sometimes the grind can just get to be too much, as it did for the author of this article; a 40-something gamer who's guild has decided to leave WoW after becoming disillusioned with some of the changes made to the game since release.The article goes into great detail about why certain changes, the battlegrounds system in particular, caused the game to simply no longer be a rewarding experience for him & his guildmates, echoing statements that I've heard from a wide variety of players. While I agree with many of his gripes, I've yet to become burned out myself, but then again, I haven't yet reached the ranks that the players in question were able to reach, nor have I invested quite as much time yet; I'm somewhere in-between a casual & hardcore player, usually playing about 10-20 hours per week. The article does raise some good points, however, about the state of the game almost 2 years since its release & the reasons why certain aspects of it can become tedious & frustrating. What about you all? Have any of you experienced 'game burnout' before? Have you quit this, or any other game, over changes that you didn't agree with? Do you still enjoy playing WoW as much as you did when you first began? Check out the article here, and then let us know what you think.

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Paid Character Transfer Confirmed

Looks like Elizabeth's earlier report on paid character transfers was right on the money, as today's report on UkGamespot confirms. They have an interview with Blizzard developer Shane Dabiri, who sheds some more light on the process, including official details for pricing & realm transfer rules.Dabiri also touches on some of the reasons for the transfer regulations, and addresses some other related questions, including the oft-mentioned cross-realm battlegrounds. So, if you're planning on switching realms when transfers become available, check it out & find out all you need to know!

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Gaming By Mike D'Anna

Undocumented Changes in Patch 1.11

It seems that, with every new patch, there are always a few changes that, for one reason or another, don't make the release notes. But never fear, Blizzard won't be able to pull the wool over your eyes once you check out this list of undocumented changes in 1.11, compiled by the folks at WorldofWar.net. Nothing extremely signifigant was left unnoted, it seems, but there are plenty of little tidbits that are very helpful to know relating to specific quests, factions, and other things. Check out the list at their forums, and be sure to add anything you might have found, as well!

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WoW Moviewatch: Eternal Legend

Well, since I don't speak the Taiwanese language (I think that's what this is in), I have no idea what they're singing about, but this is definitely one of the best-edited WoW fan videos I've seen in some time. It's called Eternal Legend, and even unintelligible, it's still quite enjoyable. Kudos to the creator; check it out below.

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Scourge Invasion FAQ

For those of you who have left comments asking specific questions about the ongoing Scourge Invasion event, this post over on the official forums might just be what you're looking for; it's a FAQ (frequently asked questions, for you acronym-impaired) all about the Scourge event, that answers just about all the questions we know the answers to so far. We still don't know how long the event will last or what it will take to defeat the invasion, but there are plenty of tips here to get you started on the path. Kudos to player Ghostwalka for putting it all together. My experience so far with the event has been limited to taking on a few isolated undead in Stormwind & encoutering a Necropolis in Winterspring that scared the heck out of me when I first saw it. I plan to dive headfirst into the events this weekend, though, and this post has me surious to see some of the things that will happen. Check it out & while you're out there battling the Scourge, report anything new you find back here to us!

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