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Wing Clip as weapon leveler
Mania posted about a tip from Lienna about spamming Wing Clip to powerlevel weapon skill, and I've confirmed that yes, as long as you wait for the global cooldown (obviously), you an spam Wing Clip and you'll receive weapon skill ups for those hits. Though I didn't try it with any abilities, I'd assume that it works for any instant melee hit (Sunder Armor jumps to mind). Of course, you not only have to worry about hitting whatever it is you choose to hit, but you also have to worry about killing it-- I did have to step back and finish off the mob with my hunter's bow.So it seems hunters can level their weapon skills a little faster than other classes. And why shouldn't they? They have a lot more weapons to skill up, and it's not like melee weapon skill matters much to hunters anyway, except at the very limits of min-maxing. A melee hit is a melee hit-- if hunters get to hit more often, then they get to level weapon skill faster, too.
The pros and cons of instant leveling
Keen took an interesting look at a strange little MMO game mechanic last weekend: instant leveling. I first encountered this in Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot-- after you get one character to a certain level, the game would let you use the "/level" command to pop any character you created up to a higher level instantly.You might argue that we haven't seen that tactic lately, but we're going to see a big example of it next year-- when Blizzard releases Death Knights in the next WoW expansion, we've already been told that they'll start at a higher level. The official explanation for that is that they don't want Death Knights to ever be level 1 (they want them cool from the start), but considering that the expansion will also bring 10 more levels into the mix, it's a lot to ask players who've already reached level 80 to roll a new character and do it again.
Escape Artist facing raised cooldown?
Are they toying with the Escape Artist cooldown? I sure thought this thread, after reading the first post today, would get closed down but quick, but instead, after a player asked for Escape Artist to be removed from the game, Drysc offered the compromise of a cooldown.Wait, what? Was he joking? Escape Artist, the Gnome racial ability that allowed them to ditch any roots once per minute, got a nice buff and was made instant cast at 2.0, but I hardly think it's overpowered enough that it deserves a cooldown. Drysc's comment seems a lot like a joke (and an MVP shows up later in the thread to "deny" the change), but could the ability be facing a nerf in the form of a longer cooldown?Advocates for it point to Will of the Forsaken, another "break free" racial ability (it allows Forsaken to break fear once every two minutes, and if EA is nerfed, it would probably be given a two minute cooldown). But WotF also provides 5 seconds of fear immunity after being used, and EA doesn't provide any immunities at all.Hopefully this is all a moot point, and Drysc was just messing with Gnomes (a hilarious pastime to be sure). But it could also mean that the little kneebiters are looking at an upcoming nerf.
Meetro released for OS X
Location based social-networking is a concept that has been bouncing around the net for a while now. The idea is to make getting together and interacting with people easier by sorting users by--or simply displaying--their geographic proximity to you. Services such as dodgeball have become hugely successful in mobile markets, and Meetro is attempting to do the same thing for desktops and laptops. With Meetro, you create a buddy list, and are alerted whenever someone on that list comes within a user specified distance of your current location. I'd get into the magic internet voodoo that Meetro uses to figure out where you are, but their FAQ page is currently down. Although Meetro is the first location-aware instant messaging service that I know of, I can't see it taking off. My issues with it are two fold; I have to create a whole new identity to use the service, and if I want to know where my friends are, I have to get them to do the same. Although the interface of the program has come a long way from when I first saw it in its early beta stages, its still not nearly as user friendly or intuitive as I would like. Ideally, I'd like to see a plug-in for iChat or Adium which allows me to see the location of my regular AIM/MSNIM/YIM buddies when I mouse over them. In any case, Meetro is certainly an interesting concept, and worth checking out, even if only to get a taste of what surely will be many similar services to come.Via MacNN
Inquisitor goes web-based
Inquisitor, the Safari and Camino plug-in that brings Spotlight to searching the web, has been ported to a web-based search engine. Upon entering a search into its pleasantly minimal interface, you will be presented with a list of search recommendations and a variety of search engines to focus on, including digg, Amazon and their A9 search, Flickr, Google, Technorati and Yahoo!. Neat.[via Daring Fireball Linked List]
Easy iPod/PSP movies with Instant Handbrake
When it comes to turning a DVD into a movie file, Handbrake's name is hailed far and wide for its ease of use, speed and overall quality. Recently, Handbrake's developer took these praised aspects and raised the bar by releasing Instant Handbrake (beta), a one-stop, brain-dead-easy app for converting a DVD to iPod/PSP-compatible video.By default it's set to crop the video when necessary (4:3 for iPod, 16:9 for PSP), depending on which device you specify, but you can elect to maintain the video in its original size. Video formats are MPEG-4 or H.264 for the iPod, and MPEG-4 for the PSP.Like its big brother, Instant Handbrake is free and available here.
