Paul Sherrard

News By Paul Sherrard

It came from the Blog: Forums!

What's that you say? You can't have a guild without forums? Well, we must agree with you, as we've gone and set up WoW Insider's very own guild with a set of forums for you, the guild membership. You'll find the forums at our very creatively named guild website - www.itcamefromtheblog.com (genius, isn't it?) While registration isn't required to post, we do encourage it. Try registering with your character's name, jumping into the conversation, or starting one up. As always, please keep it family friendly, as we have members of all ages and persuasions in the guild.WoW Insider staff will make an appearance when we can, but we're really focused on blogging here to bring you the latest news, information and commentary as it relates to the World of Warcraft!

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News By Paul Sherrard

CTProfiles is shutting down

WoW Insider reader Rakuen sent us a tip about a posting on the CTProfiles forums from the beginning of the month. It seems that even before this Tuesday's change to the Armory, the writing was on the wall for CTProfiles. In fact, if you try to go to the main site, you're redirected to the forum with this posting.From the post:It has finally got to the point where it's simply too much work to 'fix' things. With several offers of help, only a few minor things were ever completed, and leaving Cide as the only coder was just not enough to get out from the overwhelming load. We're not happy to see things not working, but it just isn't feasible to attempt to fix them. We still feel there is a very viable use for a custom profiling site, even with the armory out. The armory can't help you compare your crafted set to tier4 or 5, nor your arena gear vs. misc. pieces. We've started a very early stage of development for a CTProfiles2.0 project, which is essentially a complete recode, however we won't be releasing it any time soon. Our focus is going to be shifted back to CTMod, and we'll be working on a new unannounced mod that's been in the works for a few weeks, CT_RaidAssist2.0, some fixes and updates to older mods, and we'll continue to go from there. As for development of the CTP2 site, I won't even set an estimate of when we'd be starting work on it again. So, what's your take on CTProfiles shutting down? Did you ever get a chance to use this site? What will you miss, and what are you looking forward to seeing the CT team do next?

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News By Paul Sherrard

Not quite a set - Typhoon

We've looked at a couple of the Tier 2 look-a-like sets in the past (the Green Wrath and Purple Judgement sets for those keeping score at home) and I felt it was time to continue. Maybe it's just me, but I really like when my armor set LOOKS complete. My shammy is currently striding about Shattrath in his Tidefury set, and I've had quite a few nice comments on the character's overall look. So, if you're as strangely obsessed with completing a look as I am, I hope you'll find these articles on non-set sets appealing. If you prefer gear with the best stats over looks, you may not be getting that here.This time around, I'm looking at a Shaman healing set, which happens to mimic the look of the Ten Storms tier 2 set. The graphics really don't do it justice, as you'll actually get little bolts of lightning playing around the shoulders and head when you put this gear on. As everything in the set has a slightly nautical naming convention, and the colors give off a deep-sea kinda vibe, I am now dubbing this set "Typhoon". Feel free to spread that around, folks.

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Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Patch Notes: 2.1.1

Not *quite* as short as last time, but 2.1.1 is not a major patch by anyone's reckoning (unless, you know, you're all about "The Fel and the Furious"). Clocking in at 1.84MB on the PC and 3.45 MB on the Mac, here's what you'll be getting:World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.1Bugs Players will now be able to properly destory the infernals in the quest, "The Fel and the Furious" Gladiator's Plate Legguards: Fixed a graphical display error. Fixed a bug that caused some systems to see terrain holes appear in the distance. Stackable items retrieved from mail will no longer automatically stack in your inventory. This has been disabled pending a future patch fix. Players will no longer see the flickering terrain issues that were introduced with 2.1.0 when the LOD system is enabled. [Thanks to Kompost for the tip!]

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Reader UI: Chronnick

Finally! A UI that some of you may have been waiting for - I know I was. It's frequent commenter Chronnick and his UI! I'll get out of the way and let Chronnick explain:Here it is! After a month of delays due to nitpicking every single element of the UI, I hereby humbly present my interface. My focus here was to leave as much of the world visible as possible, while still showing a ton of information, and not using a ton of memory or cpu time. So I've thrown it all towards the bottom of the screen and made it as pretty as possible using Skinner and Clearfont. Clearfont anti-aliases all my fonts, and Skinner gives me a pretty, uniform background on all my windows. I'm still working on making Damage Meters and KTM a little less ugly and I think there is a way to do that with Skinner, but that's still a work in progress. For the unit frames I've got ag_UnitFrames using the ABF skin that i modified a bit for to hide the background of the target's caster bar. My buffs are shown using Buffalo, which allows me to place them to the right of my health/mana bars the same way my party member's buffs are shown. But by using Buffalo instead of agUnitFrames' own buff display, i can right-click my buffs to remove them.

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

How much WoW is too much WoW?

Today has a new podcast from the folks over at Taverncast, and it has my guild a-buzz with talk of WoW Addiction. We're a casual raiding guild, 3 nights a week, 4 hours a night. Sure, that's 12 hours of commitment a week, but still a low number compared to other raiding guilds. That would be well and fine, but a large number of our members play a lot outside of raiding hours - farming mats, doing daily quests, getting reputation, etc. So when the Taverncast After Hours #3 came up today, with the gang discussing gaming addiction, and one member going so far as to undertake a little experiment a la Morgan Spurlock, it really got us thinking - are we playing too much WoW? Some of the things on their list (about an hour in) of questions to ask yourself, I have had to say yes to at one time or another. How about you?So, go take some time out to listen (while you're playing WoW, of course) and then come back and let us know how much WoW you play each week, and what you think is a reasonable amount of time to commit to the game. Is 15 hours in a row of ANY activity too much? (listen to the whole podcast to get that one)

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Reader WoWspace: Wulf Knight

This edition of WoWspace comes with actual photos of an actual person!! This is a first for us, as the rest of you have been showing off your rigs, but not your mugs (the non-coffee kind). This is a really great setup, which I'd love to mimic myself, but I'm pretty sure I'd get complaints taking my TV out of the living room and putting it into the office.My name is Wulf Knight, I'm 31 and living in Madison WI. My main is Felixia, a level 70 main-tanking furball in the progressive raiding guild of Persistence on Uldum (of which I am also a founder and occifer). I suppose one of the more unique features of my WoW environment is that fact that what you see is it's natural state... I can't stand clutter. As you can see, my computer is my entire entertainment centre... We have the Logitech Z-5500s to which the XBOX 360, PS2, primary monitor and PC are running through, all via optical (Impact Acoustics A/V Selector FTW!).

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

WoW Patch 2.1.0.6729 - shortest patchnotes ever

I'm pretty sure that this sentence is actually longer than the patch notes. I'm also thinking that the image for this entry is going to take up more space than the text. And to top it all off, for once you're not going to have to click through to read the full details for this odd, out-of-place Wednesday morning patch.In fact, this is practically a non-entry, and merely here as a service to let you know that when you get home today you'll have a 1.75mb download for the following: Bugs Fixed a crash in the client. Yep, that's it. Go back to your day, enjoy work or whatever you're doing and brace yourself for this momentous and huge Wednesday patch.

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Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Breakfast Topic: Desert island mod

A few days ago, 1up was asking readers about their "desert island game". You know the scenario, you've probably done this with friends before. It's usually books or CD's or movies, but 1up's article got me to thinking. Let's say you're stuck in a desert island, you have a gaming laptop powerful enough to play WoW well, and have rigged up solar power and wireless internet. Unfortunately, for the sake of our conversation, your internet and power only work to get your laptop playing WoW, no other outside communication, and you inexplicably forget to ask your guildies to send a rescue plane to your island. Oh, and your account is free. Hmm, come to think of it, why would anyone WANT to leave this situation?? Great weather, we'll pretend there's ample food, and all the WoW you can handle! It's like a little gamer's paradise there, just hanging out, getting tanned, swimming with little Nemos in the nearby offshore coral reef, finding new and interesting ways to cook fish in coconut milk. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, so you're on this island, with your WoW laptop and all that goodness, but you can only bring 1 addon/mod with you (no compilations). What would your addon/mod be, and why?

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

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.

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Reader UI: Sewell

While I was hoping to see a submission from Chronnick, based on last week's comments, that has yet to come. Instead, we get a very nice treat indeed. You want video? You want pictures? You want to be able to download the UI you see here? Then look no further than Sewell's UI, kindly submitted here for your enjoyment: My UI has been tweaked to perfection over the course of a couple months. I love the clean design and functional layout.

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Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Reader WoWspace: Skyghene

Maybe it's just me, but I read Skyghene as rhyming with Hygene, and so I get a little extra chuckle when checking out this week's Reader WoWspace. I mean, it's totally cool and all to take some snapshots of your space as it exists in its regular state, unlike the cleaned and polished spaces we sometimes see here, and I'm so digging the microwave, but.. well.. maybe it's the paper towel roll that just sends me over the top and makes me laugh. I love it, and now I really want a mini fridge and a microwave in my home office. Hi, my name is Skyghene im a 65 undead rogue on Magtheridon and this is my WoWspace:- Desk- Custom built computer- Fridge under the desk for those endurance sessions- Microwave beside computer for really intense endurance sessions- brown sugar cinnamon poptarts to keep me going- Logitech g15 keyboard- My desk as it slowly bends downward from all the weight on it- Razer copperhead mouse- alot of empty cups- old plates- my cell phone- an old video camera- old packs of guitar strings- some old usb cablesShort and sweet from Skyghene, but the photos really make up for the lack of long monologue, don't they? What's the coolest non-computer item in your WoWspace? Do you have something better than a microwave or a bar fridge? Let us know here, and send in YOUR space, including photos, a list of elements, and what about it makes it special to you, and we'll feature it here in the upcoming weeks. Submit yours to "readerwowspace at gmail dot com" today!

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

BBC reports on upcoming WoW competition

Slashdot is linking this morning to an article that BBC has posted today which gathers views from several game developers as they talk about what comes next when you have a behemoth such as the World of Warcraft dominating the MMO-verse. While somewhat light on new perspectives, it's just further showing that developers really do have to account for WoW when considering their existing and future software offerings. Though the article talks with people behind Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online, and the upcoming Age of Conan, I find that Slashdot commenter JanusFury sums it up best with, "Instead of complaining about the lack of a strong competitor to WoW, how about making one?" What's on your MMO horizon as a WoW-killer? Does anything coming up, or existing on the market now, have a powerful enough hook to pull you away from the World of Warcraft? Obviously, if you look at the included image, you know what I'm waiting for. [via Slashdot]

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Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Breakfast Topic: How big is your guild?

I've seen guilds with 1 member, I've been in guilds with 500 members, and yet I've never found a guild that can be everything to everybody. I'm sure even those guys with their 1-man guilds get a bit lonely from time to time. So what is it that makes a guild too big, too small, or just right for your average player? Would you prefer to be a member of a small, tightly-knit guild or a sprawling mass of people so huge that everyone on your server knows your guild, if not you? What does the size of a guild's membership say to you as a member or prospective member? Does size matter, and if it does, which is better - erring on the smaller side of numbers, or a population enough to start a small city? How big is your guild, and is it the right size for you? Why? If not, then what are you looking for from a guild, and how does the size of the guild play into your perception and comfort-level with that guild? Lots of questions, let's hear your answers!

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Breakfast topic: Can I have your stuff?

Let's face it, one day we're all going to stop playing World of Warcraft. Sure, maybe that day is later for some of us than others (the phrase "pry it out of my cold, dead hands" comes to mind), but whether it's to a new game, a new relationship, or any of a multitude of reasons, our time with WoW will come to a close. What I'm curious about is what you all plan on doing when you go. Will you give away all your hard earned loot, or maybe even your account? Will you make a video of removing all your gear and deleting your toon? Will you just let it expire and sit on a shelf somewhere? I've seen people in my guild leave the game before, but more often than not they come back to it after a few months. I've never actually known anyone to do anything shocking, or give away large sums of gold. Well, there was that one guildie near the end of beta who gave me 20g, but that doesn't count. Share your personal vision of what you want to happen when you leave WoW, and any stories you may have of people who've left the game and what they did, in the comments below.

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Lord British likes WoW

Well, okay, maybe he doesn't *like* it like it, but Richard Garriott (aka Lord British) certainly appreciates the existence of the World of Warcraft. In an article I came across over at the WoW Vault on IGN, the creator of the Ultima series, and the Ultima Online MMO, discusses his feelings on the juggernaut that is WoW. The article quotes an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, where Garriott states, "We commonly get the question, is World of Warcraft a big competitor that might hurt our sales? It really turns out to be quite the opposite." He then goes on to comment that MMO players typically will only play a game or two at a time, but then move on after a year. I've been happily playing WoW since February of 2004, so I'm into my third year of the game, and nothing else has caught my eye in the MMO market. There are a couple of games on the horizon, but of the folks I'm playing WoW with, the majority have been around from the get-go. Are we just crotchety old-timers who won't admit that the average player only sticks around for a year? Is what Lord British says true? Did any of you ditch other MMO's to come to WoW, or have you ditched WoW for other MMO's after playing for a year?

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Apps

Apps By Paul Sherrard

Reader UI of the Week: Omegi

This week, Omegi, a member of <J E T T> on Kalecgos horde-side sends in his fairly minimal UI. It gets me to thinking, and I hope it'll get you to thinking too. Here's what's on my mind - what's more efficient: well-placed buttons with easy visual clues, or an array of keybindings that you commit to memory? Omegi has a set of keybindings which are great, and I'm digging the large buttons for infrequently used items/skills. Here is the UI I have grown to love over the career of my mage. Here is a list of mods and key bindings. My mod list: CT Raid Assist: Only for the group bars to show buffs. A raid leader must know his class officers are buffing up their members properly. Bongos: This allowed me to move buttons around and make them smaller or larger. It also allows me to color the square for range notification and allows easy hover and click key bindings. Cryolosys Revived: A mage must have. Otherwise you have 2 bars of useless buffs Natures Enemy Cast bar: Shows enemy and friendly cast and cool down timers. I know when a soulstone is available or when someones polymorph timer is up. Deadly Boss Mods: Better than CT Boss mods by a long shot. Easy Combat log: It's color coded crap for idiots like me. Titan Panel: duh? Improved Camera2 : extends the range you can zoom out. EZdismount: click a spell while mounted and you dismount for the fast attack. Trinket Menu: better trinket management. Xperl Unit Frames: Better group frames Smart Debuff: Every debuff class must have it.

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Reader WoWspace of the Week: Patrick and Kyle

This week, on a very special episode of Reader WoWspace... Two men, brought together by fate share a destiny they never thought was possible. This summer, from the producer of The Odd Couple, and the director of The Crying Game comes an experience you'll never forget - Patrick and Kyle's WoWspace!Okay, maybe not earthshaking, but I do find it interesting that it's a shared space. Do any of you share your WoWspace with another? If so, send it in! Here are the details:Patrick and Kyle's WowSpace from Southern Wisconsin.Characters from Left to RightGorgas - Level 70 Warlock (Skywall PvE)Rebourn - Level 14 Warlock (Arthas PvP)Budenhagen - Level 70 Rogue (Arathor PvE)

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Apps

Apps By Paul Sherrard

Reader UI of the Week: Silph

Another great and simple UI this week, but I still want to see your outlandish (get it?) designs and crazy UI schemes. Do you have something you think no one else has been able to show us yet? Send it to readerui at gmail dot com. Silph writes: Function over form. I follow that rule in my design work, and did so with this UI. Basically everything is suited to my needs, all while being simple and as minimal as possible. To begin with there are two chat frames, the on the left shows guild, part and raid chat while the one on the right shows everything else from trade to a tabbed combat log. Above the each chat frame there are a collection of buttons. The left ones have macros of my Outfitter gear sets (Tanking, DPS, FR, AR etc etc) along with profession buttons (Enchanting, smelting, cooking etc). The right ones on the other hands are my trade macros. Each button advertises in trade an enchant I can do. The macros will spam something along the lines of: "Enchanting Savagry (70 AP) on 2H weapon I'll wave my rod and make you glow©" but I digress.

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

From Rock Journalist to WoW Addict

At the end of March, the Times issued an 8-page supplement along with a demo of World of Warcraft. Aside from getting me wondering how many Londoners are now trying out the game, it brought along a fantastic article by Caitlin Moran. You'll want to read the article to understand the image accompanying this posting. In "My life as a bearded dwarf", we're given a humorous and insightful view into what can drag a mild-mannered reporter and mother of two into the world's biggest online game. Okay, maybe mild-mannered is pushing it. This is the same Caitlin Moran who started off into the world of music journalism at 16, wished an entire band dead in an album review, and who's spent time hanging out with Robbie Williams and writing on how cocaine has been responsible for some great albums. Yes, I owe my knowledge of these facts to the mighty Wikipedia. While her choice of character names (Scottbaio) leaves much to be desired, I'm left wondering how long it'll be before I actually see a Thrusthammer Orcbash on a realm near me. How did you get into World of Warcraft? When was it that you realized that you had been entirely sucked in, and the 20 minutes you THOUGHT you were going to spend turned into 2 or 3 hours? Thanks a million to Dave for the submission!

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PC Gaming By Paul Sherrard

Using World of Warcraft to teach English

There's a story on Gamasutra today about using games, specifically WoW, as a way of exposing Asian youth to English. As an author of English-language textbooks for students in Japan and Taiwan, this particularly caught my attention. I'll let you go read the article to understand what's been done, but I'd like to share some thoughts here on the subject. First and foremost, I think that using a game like WoW to teach casual, conversational English is a fantastic idea. With in-game chat, as well as Teamspeak/Ventrilo, you can really expose non-native speakers to the language in all its forms. Granted, you're not going to learn high-level business English, but you are going to be able to come away with a grasp of the language and some of its conversational nuances. I also firmly believe that language is not as severe a barrier in WoW as it may be in other games. I know that many of us have come across a member of the opposite faction, and have been able to communicate through emotes or movements, or even through how we interact with the mobs in the situation. With less of a barrier to communication from the get-go, there's less of an intimidation factor involved for someone who wants to get something across. However, through my experience, I've definitely seen some roadblocks to using WoW as an educational tool. I think it may be less prevalent on the European servers (please let me know if this is so, or I have a misperception), but on the North American servers I've played on, there seems to be a solid amount of intolerance for people who can't perfectly communicate in English. A lot of this may stem from gold farmers who don't speak the language, but there are also French and Spanish speaking players on these realms who may have had to endure a certain amount of ridicule before finding acceptance in a given guild. My question to the WoW Insider community is this - if you were aware that your server was being used for cross-cultural and cross-lingual training, would you accept this and would you put forth the time and energy to help non-English speakers be a part of your guild or your party and learn the language? If not, why not?

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Reader WoWspace of the Week: March 29 - April 4

This week's entry is a doozy. It is big in all ways that a WoWspace can be big. Lots of write-up, giant images, and 2 screens that just look huge. I never thought my 2x 20" screens would look small. How wrong was I... Hey, wowspaces moderation folk! Long time reader, first time submitter...although, i guess everyone is a first time submitter. anyways! Here is my wowspace, with a little description of it all. Let's start out with the monitors first, my pride and joy :P those are 2 24" dell widescreens, each running at 1920x1280 resolution. the laptop is a 13" black macbook. All three of these screens are connected to the same keyboard and mouse, which navigates across all three screens through a virtual KVM program called Synergy. This is nice, since it lets me run processive intensive apps on the mac, while my desktop can be dedicated to running WoW. So, what about the desktop specs you say? Athlon 64 4200+ processor2gb of DDR2 533mhz ramgeforce 6800 ultra card, 512mb video memory7200RPM, 300GB hard drive. The laptop is a 1.8ghz intel core duo macbook, 1gb of ram - it does the job when im out of the house :) Both systems are connected to a Creative Gigaworks G500 sound system.

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Green Wrath = Envy?

Yesterday, we explored the Purple Judgement non-set, so it only seems fair that we continue our exploration of re-skinned Tier 2 goodness, as not all of you play paladins (why not?) at the present time. Today we take a look at the reskinned level 70 version of the warrior's Cylon Wrath set. I was always impressed with the look of this set, with the bladed shoulders, and the mohawk-blade helm. I'm not sure which I like more, the original purple, or this new green version. How do you warriors feel that your sets (and non-sets) are focused on tanking rather than on arms or fury builds? Can you live without a good-looking coherent set of armor pieces? If you are looking to tank, here are the non-set pieces that visually form a green Wrath set (which I like to call "Envy") and where you'll find them:

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Reader UI of the Week: March 15 - 30

This edition's UI is, in my opinion, pretty good looking. It's clean and it looks like all the mods have been tweaked in their settings to look as though they belong to a coherent whole. Zodak of Dark Iron provides an explanation of his UI is as quick and clean as the setup itself: My UI goal is to simply display everything necessary in a straightfoward manner. Minimalism with the most pertinent information shown as possible without creating clutter. I've also focused a lot on maximizing my widescreen display. The mods we can see include: FuBar EEpanels SWstats agUnitFrames Bartender3 Prat Squeenix SimpleCombatLog Buffalo What do you think of Zodak's setup? What I want to see from you in submissions for the next edition are some really WACKY UI setups. Let's see how outrageous you can get! Maybe we can put together a cavalcade of the weird, the cluttered, the unusable! Show us what you got by submitting to: readerui@gmail.com

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Not quite a set: Purple Judgement

I really wanted to call this article "The Peculiar Purple Paladin of Porcupine Peak", but aside from being fairly non-descriptive, I was afraid the reference would be lost. Instead, I decided to just state exactly what we're looking at over on the right. I hope we can all agree that the Paladin Tier 2 Judgement set is a solidly designed set of gear, which really breathed some life and energy into the Paladin class, stylistically speaking. As a paladin myself, it became my whole world. It was the single reason I played with my online dress-up doll, err.. paladin. When I had finally achieved the set, I felt satisfied and complete. Then the Burning Crusade came. Try as I might to not do it, I've had to put several pieces of judgement into storage as I'm leveling from 60 to 70. My poor little pally now looks like a hodgepodge of pieces from a bargain bin. Luckily for those of us who plan to take our (forced?) places in a raid group upon hitting 70, there's a bit of a black light at the end of the tunnel. While "Purple Judgement" isn't a fully realized set, with bonuses and a name, it is a grouping of very viable healing gear for the level 70 paladin. If you're keen on maintaining that Judgement look, and you're okay with being a healer at level 70, you'll want to seek out the following pieces, from helm to boot:

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