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The Daily Quest: Of macros, mother-in-laws and Addon movies
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Darraxus the Warrior has laid down the Commandments of Pugging. He only lists six, but they're enough to make the difference between a succesful run and another nightmare PuG.. Wulf's Warcraft Weblog has been dreaming of a Wolf Spirit Beast to tame. So they made one. Check out their concept art. The Master's Call blog has a guide on Gearing For Raids for Newbies. They're just getting into raiding and sharing what they are learning in a series of posts. Gnomeaggedon shares his views on Why WoW Is Like Bringing Up Kids. From crowd control to rolling restarts to bear form. Head on over and add your own suggestion. Miss Elf is considering the pros and cons and introducing her mother-in-law to WoW. How would she react encountering her first ninja looter? The response is classic. One Rogue's Journey continues their Friday Morning AddOn series, this time with a movie explaining ag_UnitFrames. Big Hit Box, a blog focusing on posts for all melee DPS specs, has a new post up on macros for PVE Enhancement Shamans. Submit a guide, post, podcast or resource for inclusion in TDQ, by using our tip line and we'll consider it for a future TDQ post.
Scattered Shots: ViperNotify and aspect swapping
Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skills, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be talking about how to effectively swap between aspects to improve your performance. Pike from Aspect of the Hare published a post recently, "Aspect of the Viper and You", in which she describes what Aspect of the Viper is and when to use it. For raiding and leveling Hunters alike, Aspect of the Viper is a powerful tool to reduce downtime when mana is running low. Stopping to drink or popping mana potions is almost obsolete thanks to this great aspect, and Pike's article goes a long way in teaching newbies and veterans alike when it's time to put that aspect to use. Today, I'd like to take that idea further and discuss more ways to help put Aspect of the Viper to work for you. For raiding Hunters, it's extremely easy to switch to Aspect of the Viper during a fight to regen mana and then forget to swap back to Aspect of the Dragonhawk once your mana bar is full again. I know in the past I've had less than stellar numbers on the meters simply because I forgot to switch aspects! Sure, swapping aspects should be a no-brainer, but simple mistakes are easy to make when you're dodging slimes, fire and big ol' dragons. For that reason, I started using ViperNotify. This add-on is very simple and light weight. All it does is notify you via pretty blue alert text that appears on your screen (similar to a raid alert) that your mana bar is full but Aspect of the Viper is still active. It also plays a quick little ding sound (which is, amazingly, not the slightest bit annoying) to catch your attention in case you missed the warning text. There are, of course, several other mods that behave similarly, but ViperNotify is the one I use. This one simple add-on makes it much easier to ensure the best possible performance from your two primary aspects.
Darkfall lays out a strict anti-macroing policy
There are no levels in Darkfall Online. Instead, they use a skill-based progression system. For example: the more you cast magic missile, the better your magic missiles become. Once your magic missile becomes good enough, you will be able to learn a more powerful spell. Obviously a system like this can be easily exploited by macro or bot programs, so it isn't surprising that Adventurine is taking a strict stance against any such exploitation. Of course, there are also the reports of speedhacking where players can run as fast or faster than sprint without losing stamina.Tasos does not define the term "macro" in the policy, so one must assume its definition is broad. A macro could be assigning several actions to a single hotkey (e.g., a combination of attacks in a particular sequence). A macro could also be a reactionary action (e.g., whenever you are cursed, auto-cast your "remove curse" spell). Anyone caught macroing or spamming spells in the safety of a city or tower area will be warned once, kicked, and potentially banned for repeat attempts. It doesn't seem like they'll punish macro-users in the riskier open-world unless the macros are unattended (generally called bots). Finally, anyone caught using third-party cheating, hacking, modding, or botting programs will be perma-banned no matter where they are.[Via MMORPG.com]
SteelSeries WoW mouse dangerous in no uncertain Terms (of Use)
We had an article here not too long ago about the SteelSeries WoW mouse, purportedly das ubermaus, replete with glowing fissures and lookin' all like a Templar helmet. We actually had kind of a hard time finding out just how the mouse performed -- it was advertised months before it came out, and it doesn't appear that many gamers actually got to use the mouse prior to pre-ordering it and did so based on Blizzard's official licensing of the WoW name on the product.The few that did use it, those that played around with it at BlizzCon, actually reported to us that it felt cheap, flimsy, and about to break. That was a bit disconcerting to read, of course, and it wasn't actually an isolated incident--all of the emails we've received about it thus far have been negative reviews. Folks complained of broken buttons or strange key reassignments with the accompanying software.Now, our sister site Engadget just released their own impressions on the device and they appear to like it, offering a large size, good weight, and robust software among their list of pros.The inconsistency in reviews of the product thus far isn't what really bothers me, though. It's the fact that the mouse is a WoW-licensed product that performs functions that are against Blizzard's policies.
WoW Rookie: Leaner, meaner character controls
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.How do you control your character? If you move with the W-A-S-D keys and stab at spell and ability icons on-screen with your mouse, you're missing out on a whole world of options that can streamline your game. Simply by setting up your character controls a little differently, you can make your game play easier and more efficient. WoW Rookie pulls together a whole host of options to mull over. One of the first points to consider: How do you move your character? If you read a bit of WoW and gaming sites around the 'net, you've probably seen the phrase "mouthbreathing keyboard turner" bandied about. You're a keyboard turner if you use keys (usually W-A-S-D) on the keyboard to turn and move your character. Your character can turn (and get behind and around things and other players) much, much faster if you whip around with the mouse rather than slowly pivoting in place with your keyboard. So why's that such a big issue?
BigRedKitty: Heart of the Phoenix and Lick Your Wounds
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. You didn't really think we'd just give you a pot-stirring post today, did you?/oh behave!Ferocity pets are built for DPS, but they have two of the most powerful pet-healing spells we have: Heart of the Phoenix and Lick Your Wounds. Two big problems with our pets right now is that we have way too many pet-spells to try to cram on our pet's tiny action bar, and some of these autocasting spells will either autocast when we don't want them to, or just fail all together. To solve these issues, we can make macros to control everything. This movie will show you how to make these macros, as well as let you see these two specific pet-spells in action. You are invited to download the YouTube version (27MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (42MB) here.As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time! Nobody covers raid Hunters and Hunter-pets like BRK. Looking for more Hunter goodness? Check out our non-raid Hunter column, Scattered Shots or the WoW Insider Directory of Hunter Guides.
Ask a Wrath Player: From the ashes
Yesterday marked the end of Ask a Beta Tester, and today we begin the rise from the ashes. Like we've been saying the last few days, we're going to continue Ask a Beta Tester under a different name. What name? We don't know yet. Ask a Wrath Player is what I used today, but is that what it will be tomorrow? Who knows! It's a mystery! We're definitely here to stay, though. We're going to continue using the Q&A format for AAWP or AABT or AAGoGS or AASS or whatever bizarre acronym we end up with, so if you have any questions about Wrath or even the game in general, please ask! We have a very diverse crew here at WoW Insider, so if there's something I don't know personally, there's a big team I can ask. We don't have a lot of questions to answer from yesterday because everyone was busy partying hard to celebrate (mourn?) the end of AABT, but we'll answer what we have
Win a WotLK CE from WoW Macros
Macros are awesome. I may not use them all that extensively, but the ones I have, I love. And I'm always on the lookout for more good macros to simplify my action bars. WoW Macros, a site that's been around quite a long time and has the laudable mission of listing handy macros for all classes, has just undergone a complete redesign, and they're having a contest to celebrate, with some pretty sweet Wrath-related prizes. Up for grabs are: One Wrath of the Lich King collector's edition Two regular copies of WotLK Three 60-day time cards As well as ten copies of Derek's WotLK Guide, a normally-paid Wrath leveling guide. If you want my opinion, though, just go for Jame's guides; they're free and very high-quality. Jame's guides will be released in the week ahead on WoW Pro.At any rate, there are some very cool prizes here. And what do you have to do to participate? Just head on over to the WoW Macros site and submit a new macro, or suggest an improvement to one that's already on the site (be sure to use a valid email). Every valid submission gives you a "ticket" to the contest, and shortly after midnight on November 12, the day before Wrath, sixteen winners will be drawn randomly and emailed. You can't win more than one prize, but submitting more macros does give you a greater chance to win something. Now get coding -- that collector's edition isn't going to win itself.
BigRedKitty: Hunter-pets in 3.0.2
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. From: The Big Bossman at WoW Insider To: The WoW Insider peons Subject: Get to work! Write a post on each of your class's trees, or you're fired. Fired with extreme prejudice! Love, Dan O., aka The Punisher ... /gulp Holy crap, we're in trouble now. Why? Because not only do we have to write about Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival, but we've now we've got pet talent trees too: Tenacity, Cunning, and Ferocity! Six talent trees, are you kidding us? This is going to take a while. And we should probably start from the beginning.
LOL Abuse in patch 3.0.2
The new achievement system that will be introduced with the 3.0.2 patch is going to make this game a bit more interesting. People will begin to do things just so they can have the achievement. In my opinion, this is great. It extends the game play and gives everyone something more to 'achieve.'What is not great in the eyes of some is the potential and actual abuse from the system that will result.Take for instance what happened when I created simple macro that did /lol, and spammed it for 60 seconds. I got a nice number of 258 "Total times LOL'd" written down in my achievements page, right there for everyone to see. This just opens up the door for abuse of the worst kind – lol abuse.What do I mean by lol abuse?
Macros saved to server instead of computer in Wrath
Wrath Beta tester Tiwo came across a welcome change when logging into her account on a different computer from normal. The macros she wrote and saved on the original machine were now available on the second machine. She posted to the EU Beta forums in thanks, and Wryxian confirmed the change was real. Macros are now saved as part of your account information, and will be available across any machine you play in. This is pretty awesome good news. Some playstyles can use a beastly number of macros, and I'm not sure I'd be a quarter as effective on my Hunter without the beloved shot rotation macro. I've been known to change my Arena macros on the fly, customizing what exactly I want to have happen according to bracket. Since I carry a laptop around, whenever I use that machine instead of my desktop, I have to rewrite and update everything. Usually, I end up playing without my beloved macros (or at least the current version of them). It might be a small quality of life upgrade, but it's one that I'm pretty happy to hear about.
WoW blog roundup
Time for another tour of the WoW blog kingdom...Why now? | Alts AhoyAll of a sudden Nasirah enjoys playing a shaman where it was boring before. In this post, she muses on why her mind has changed.How to annoy NPC's - Keep Clicking on them! | Pugnacious PriestAmusing detective work shows what happens when you annoy an NPC, including quotes on what they'll do to you if you don't stop. To bad you can't back-talk them too.Sir, I Respectfully Disagree | ChickGMA well-put and humorous rebuttal to two of WoW Insider's posts about what traits make a good guild officer and which ones to avoid. I spoke too soon | MiseryThis is actually a pair of posts in which Misery first points out that raid utility vs. damage is a flawed argument and subsequently analyzes a blue post about the same issue. Interesting theorycrafting for raid leaders.Multi-Boxing Macros 102 | Three Druid NoobRazorbax offers a primer on healing macros for the beginning multiboxer. Goblins. Innocent Pranksters, or Evil Madmen bent on world domination? | The PvP NubFinally! The answer to the question, "Just what is it with those goblin doods?"
WWI '08 Panel: Hunters
The first WoW panel has come and gone at the Worldwide Invitational. It was focused on class abilities in WoTLK, and there was some absolutely juicy stuff, especially for Hunters. As the proud player of a 70 Hunter, I'm feeling amazingly awesome about my class right now. Two of the biggest, most universal Hunter complaints have not only been answered, but answered in a way that I think a lot of Hunter players are going to be incredibly excited about. Steady Shot ClippingFirst up, it looks like Shot Rotations as we know them will soon become a thing of the past, or at least be incredibly simplified, as Steady Shots will no longer clip Auto Shots. This is actually an issue that has gained some blue post love in the past, but it's nice to see it so directly confronted and dealt with. There may still be a shot rotation of a type for fitting in Arcane Shot and various stings, but it looks like Hunter DPS will no longer be a complicated dance of weapon speed, haste rating, macros, and server latency. That in itself is amazing news. Pet Talent Trees and Uniqueness One of the other major complaints of Hunters is the lack of pet diversity. It is generally expected that if you are min-maxing, you will go for a Cat, Ravager, or Scorpid and nothing else, because they are the only pet families that have the right combination of ability and DPS to get their jobs done. Some pet classes, like Sporebats, languished due to a complete lack of useful family skills.
Fight that WoW pudge with the Wii Fit board
When you watch the video embedded above, you may think it's just another weird hack by people with too much time on their hands. But right about the 00:44 mark, suddenly you see the potential: working off that World of Warcraft bulge!Yes, these enterprising souls have managed to turn the Wii Fit balance board into an alternative method for traversing the Azerothian landscape. Of course, the health benefits are mitigated by the fact that there's no way you'll be able to balance on the board while trying to manipulate a keyboard at the same time, even if you are a macros master. But if you're desperate for some sort of exercise and can't abide the thought of actually going outside, this might be the device for you.
Keyboard Maestro 3.1 Orchestrates Macros
Macros can save you a lot of time performing repetitive functions on your Mac. While Automator and AppleScript provide a lot of power, some Mac users want an easier way to capture their keystrokes, mouse clicks and other actions. That's where Keyboard Maestro comes in. This $36 gem from Stairways Software has just been updated to version 3.1, and adds a profusion of new features. While there's not enough space here to list them all, some of the highlights include: A clipboard history switcher An action to save a clipboard to a Named Clipboard Clipboard Filters Centering windows on the current screen Fractional second (i.e., .75) pauses Can add BBEdit Text Factories to the current clipboard Stairways also fixed some known glitches from the 3.0 release. A 30-day free trial is available for download and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or better.
Blood Sport: Tips and Tricks
PvP in its purest form is a beautiful thing. Amanda Dean, always obsessed with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat brings you news you can use in the Arena. When last seen, former Blood Sport columnist V'Ming Chew had defeated a pack of angry Gnome Warlocks and had decided to take up retirement in a lovely chateau overlooking the Ring of Trials in Nagrand. So thanks to the new point requirements for Battleground gear in Arena Season Four, many people who are not as familiar with the arena will be forced to queue up. When I first started playing arenas, I didn't see it as tremendously different from battlegrounds. After several hard-learned lessons I found that I had to be much more flexible. I've also picked up a few tricks along the way. You have to count on all of your opponents using every tool available. If you're not already doing these things, give some of them a shot.
Shifting Perspectives: Yummy treats for bears to eat
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, the Big Bear Butt Blogger, brings you some choice tidbits of knowledge on level 70 consumables for the beary furry crowd. We've talked about the gear you can get to build your tanking set up to Karazhan, but to actually tank in a raid, you need to bring along plenty of tasty consumables to buff you up to tip-top shape. And that's what we're going to cover today. There are four basic types of consumables you can have active buffs from. You can have active at one time;
