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5 awesome ways World of Warcraft has improved since day one
I've been known to wax poetic about the good old days of vanilla World of Warcraft from time to time. I have lots of crazy good memories about the early days of the game -- exploring the world, playing through quests that are now long gone, raiding old content when it was current, that sort of thing. And I've followed the story of Warcraft along the way, delighting the various ways its changed and shifted over the years. It's no secret that I loved the early days of WoW -- heck, I've been playing this game for seven years now. Something's kept me sticking around, right? Every now and again, I'll have a conversation with a friend that starts with said friend asking, "Hey, Anne! You like vanilla WoW. If they ever released a server that was just vanilla WoW with nothing else on it, would you play it?" And then there's a moment where I think about that. I think about the first day I was presented with the character selection screen, going over my choices with wide-eyed delight. I think about the night elf druid I made, and the months spent exploring this shiny new world. I think of my Forsaken priest and the hours of fun I had raiding with 39 other people. And then I say to my friend, "No. Oh, no no no. Heck no."
Blizzard extends new guild services to additional realms
As promised, Blizzard's been slowing rolling out its new guild services to new realms. It's now added the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups and will continue to add more realms in the coming weeks. Guild services include realm transfer, name change, and faction change, among other things. You can read the complete FAQ at our original announcement post, and after the break, find a list of both the previously available realms and a list of the newly added realms.
Guild Realm Transfer, Faction Change and other services now available
Do you want to rename your guild, move to a new server, or change the guild's faction? Now you can! Blizzard's just announced the new Guild Services, and they're a fairly extensive lot. Having jumped servers with guilds twice now, and having seen a guild jump both servers and factions, I think this is pretty darn exciting news for anyone considering any of these changes. It'll help with holding on to guild resources, guild identity, and should make that horrible feeling of being on a new server without a tag waiting for someone to scoop you back up a thing of the past. You can read the text of the announcement at the official site and we'll have it after the jump, of course.
Faction change cooldown reduced
On the heels of the race change being implemented, the faction change cooldown has been reduced to three days. This brings it in line with the cooldown time of the race change and server transfers (both at three days). It's interesting to note the effect all this has: you can now more or less freely move around servers and factions without any major consequences. Three days off of raiding isn't a big deal, however two months off if you land in a bad guild after faction transfering your main is quite an issue. There hasn't been any blue post about this yet, but the information is present on the screens when you undertake a race change, as pictured above.
BoA transfers between factions aimed for patch 3.3
News from the mouth of the floating skull Zarhym tonight:Blizzard is aiming to allow Bind on Account (BoA) items to transfer between factions in patch 3.3. This means your characters on the opposite faction, on the same account, can receive BoA items either through the mail or some other mechanism.Huge news for those leveling alts, and a nice feature for those that have high level characters on both factions with BoA gear. My level 80 Horde hunter will gladly send some BoA items to the last of my Alliance toons waiting to be leveled up.We need to note, and read this very carefully, this change is only hopefully going to make it into patch 3.3. If it's not, do not go cry to Zarhym or Ghostcrawler or your mom that the change didn't make it in -- they are not promising, only letting us know that it's something they'd like to have for us in this upcoming content patch.Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
We Have a Tabard: Strange bedfellows
Looking for a guild? Well, you can join ours! We have a tabard and everything! Check back for Amanda Dean talking about guilds and guild leadership in We Have a Tabard.For years Blizzard has claimed that there would be no chance for faction changes. They didn't use the word "never" but they did say there were no plans on doing it. Much has changed since the Blizzard/Activision Merger. Well, the time has come, and what has become of it. I honestly can't tell you if the impact has been good or bad, but there has certainly been an impact.If I haven't mentioned before, I play Horde. The first night that transfers came out, a number of my friends and guildies swapped characters over from Alliance. Good to see an influx of variety, but much attention turned to leveling forgotten alts. I don't know anyone who has transferred from Horde to Alliance. Given a better opportunity, I'm sure there are plenty who would make the switch. Faction changes have had an interesting effect on guild on my server. A number of raiders from the top guilds swapped factions and joined forces with the top guilds on the Alliance side. The Alliance guilds have always been front runners in progression and this move has served to make them stronger. That's excellent for them.
Survey: Figuring out the faction transfer numbers
I've been thinking about this ever since the faction changes went live: obviously, Blizzard will never actually release the numbers on how many server transfers or faction changes they do, just because they are notoriously guarded about the information they release, not least because riots are pretty easy to incite on the forums (imagine the reaction if Blizzard officially said that Alliance was the more popular faction). But I wonder nevertheless: how many players have transferred their characters over from one faction to another already? And lots of people seem to think that the vast majority of transfers are Alliance to Horde (not to mention I've heard many anecdotal stories of people flooding back to the Horde), but is that true?Obviously, we don't have access to all of Blizzard's audience, and our polls are definitely much less scientific than the data Blizzard gets to look at (you better believe they're tracking transfers and faction and race choices with a close eye, just as they're tracking server populations 24/7), but just for the heck of it, we'll ask. After the break, we've got a few polls designed to give us a very general look at how transfers are playing out so far. There's a lot of anecdotal experiences flying around since transfers went live, but I'd like to know, a little more objectively, just how things are panning out.
BlizzCon 2009: Q&A with Cory Stockton
The DirecTV stream has been of questionable stability today, but it has brought us an excellent interview with Cory Stockton, WoW's lead world designer. Here's what we learned: Development on Cataclysm was started before Wrath of the Lich King was done. Deathwing is the main boss of Cataclysm, as Arthas was for Wrath. You will not be able to go back to the old world content at all post-Cataclysm. Faction transfer will let you choose any race that can play your class. Archaeology is a secondary skill, like cooking, so anyone can get it. It ties in very closely with Path of the Titans, the new advancement system. It's all about traveling through Azeroth finding ancient artifacts, with a mini-game to decipher what the artifact is, and then you get rewards for it. Rewards will include profession recipes, items, and money, and the big reward will be new glyph slots for Path of the Titans (hopefully more on this later). The Worgen will have their own district in Stormwind. Odds and ends, sure, but some darn interesting ones. BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!
