matt-low
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Why would a top guild not use loot council?
A blog post over at World of Matticus caught my eye earlier this week. It's called Why a World Top 10 Guild Doesn't use Loot Council and tells a short story of how our own Matt Low was surprised to find out that a top guild didn't use loot council. While interviewing a potential recruit for his guild Conquest, the applicant explained that his guild used DKP for loot distribution because loot council had proven too time consuming. Matt goes on to conclude that if you're racing for a world first, you probably wouldn't want to waste your time distributing loot of all things. A fair point, seeing as top guilds often get kills within hours of each other. I myself have never been in a world top 10 guild, but having been in several competitive US guilds I've seen my fair share of loot council and DKP. Regardless of the system my guild was using, we were always expected to make (and sometimes post) a list of our best-in-slot gear before the start of a tier. For DKP, this was to reduce the amount of surprises in bidding and help us all get an idea of who needed what before we snagged an upgrade. For the more common loot council, this let the council put together a master list to decide who should get what first. But which one was more efficient?
WoW Moviewatch: Ninja Raiders
Ninja Raiders was featured quite a while ago, but it cemented itself in our minds incredibly firmly. The song is amazingly catchy, and EmberIsolte nailed the vocals pitch-perfect. The lyrics are by Roninhobbit. RavenSylphe is responsible for the video, which captures the whimsy and fun of the overall production. Matt Low says that the video still makes him do the "hand thing." We don't know what the "hand thing" is, but we're sure it's catchy. And finally, a bit of trivia: Ninja Raiders was one of the few songs at the BlizzCon 2010 party that inspired attendees to dance. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
WoW Insider Show Episode 119 with special guest Mary Varn
Our podcast was live on the air as usual last Saturday, and the show is now up for your listening enjoyment. Artist Mary Varn was aboard to talk with us about her comic and her Warcraft career, and Matt Low of World of Matticus also jumped on to chat with Turpster and I about the latest WoW news, including the impending patch 3.3, the recent server outages, and the Taiwanese player who picked up all of the achievements in the game (which, probably not entirely concidentally, is the subject of Mary's comic today). And of course we answered your emails as well. For those of you wondering about our Podcast Awards nomination, voting has ended, and the winners are supposed to be announced next Saturday in a ceremony online. We'll keep you updated -- remember, if we win, we'll be giving away any prizes we get to one lucky listener, and we'll be recording a Warcraft bedtime story for all of you to download. Cross your fingers for us! Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes. [RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. Listen here on the page:
Val'anyr destroyed after lost bet
As you may have noticed, there was no patch 3.3 this week, which means the guesses are starting to be wrong. Way back in October, we guessed that the patch would drop sometime in the next three weeks (on Tuesdays, of course), but Matt "Matticus" Low was an outlier -- he said in the aftershow of this podcast that the patch would drop on December 1st. In fact, he said he was so sure that he'd shard his legendary mace Val'anyr if it didn't. Of course, as you now know (since you're logging into the realms and the patch isn't out yet), he was wrong. And so, as you can see above, we made him delete (since you can't disenchant legendary items) the mace. He's bummed, but he'll get over it, we're sure. That's what you get for betting on patch dates. So when will the patch drop? Next week (the 8th) is an excellent guess, and I believe it's Turpster's guess as well. In fact, in the same podcast linked above, I believe I bet $20 (or 50 levels, but surely T wants the money) that it wouldn't drop next Tuesday.
WoW's 5th anniversary: Our writers' memories
We at WoW.com are a sentimental bunch. I always privately thought that, but now I've got the sort of ironclad proof beloved by canny blackmailers everywhere. In the weeks before WoW's 5th anniversary, a backchannel team discussion sprang up on our memories of the game and the players with whom we've had the great privilege of playing, and we decided to collect them here in honor of WoW's birthday. Some of us are hardcore gamers with lots of experience with other games. For others, WoW was their first (and in some cases, only). Most of us raid, and some of us PvP or theorycraft. A few of us are nuts for hardware arguments, but others are surprised to discover that WoW does not actually play on our toasters. Many of us are pretty easygoing in our approach to the content; others would sell their grandmothers up the river for a server-first. One among us hates warlocks, and everyone else just hates rogues (unless you're Chase). But we do share one thing in common, and that's that we love the game no matter what we're doing while playing it -- and we hope you do too. From all of us at WoW.com, happy birthday, World of Warcraft!
WoW Insider Show Episode 116: We'll see you there
Last Saturday afternoon, as usual, we sat down to record a podcast, and you can now hear the results of that below. Adam Holisky, Matt Low, and Turpster and I all got together to talk about the biggest stories from the past week in Warcraft, including what we've heard about the new guild leveling system, the story of the BlizzCon Vegas that won't be, and news of two bags from the PTR. We also answer your emails, talking more about the Dungeon group system coming in the next patch, and how it'll affect both cross-server interaction and folks looking for Oculus runs at three in the morning. We also talked about the Podcast Awards, and the fact that something extremely unlikely has happened: we got nominated for one. If you're so inclined, you can vote for us over there right now under the "Games" section, and as we say on the show, we're going to be giving away the prize (along with a little something extra) if we happen to win. You can vote every day until November 30th, so put up a little post-it as a reminder, and head back there every day if you can. We appreciate it! Enjoy the show. Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes. [RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. Listen here on the page:
WoW Insider Show live this afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern
Our podcast is back on the air today at 3:30pm over on Ustream, and it's gonna be a hum dinger, as the old folks used to say. We'll welcome Matthew "Matticus" Low on with us, so we'll definitely be talking some healing, and The T will be back on with us after his absence last week. Should be a great time -- we'll be chatting about the most popular stories in the World of Warcraft, including (but not limited to) the latest PTR build, the Battle.net changeover, and how, probably soon, you'll be able to send items back and forth between factions.Plus we'll answer your emails as usual, since that's always a good time. Be sure to tune in and join us -- the show goes live at 3:30pm Eastern today, and you can listen on our Ustream page, via the Ustream iPhone app, or on the embedded stream below. You can also tune in a little early (like 20 minutes) if you want to hear us chatting during the preshow while we set everything up, or stay a little later to join us during the aftershow, where we turn off the recording and just chat live directly with the chat-room. It'll definitely be a lot of fun, so if you're around and available, tune in! See you there.
Breakfast Topic: Your wish
When I was first exploring the Wrath of the Lich King beta, I thought that the Dalaran Wishing Fountain was one of the coolest things ever. I'm an avid angler in WoW, and I'm a huge lore geek. Combining the two is a recipe for success, I think! I really enjoyed the ability to get a little glimpse into the mind of various lore characters, and it was offered up in a pretty interactive way. It's not only the fun quotes, but a sense of discovery accompanies each new coin.The contents of the fountain has inspired a question that's been making the rounds through the WoW community: If you had a coin in that fountain, what would it say? What wish or musing would be left on it? I posed the question to the WoW Insider team to see what they would come up with, ranging from the silly to the serious, from speaking in-character to speaking as a player. Here's what they (we) had to say...
The Queue: Shameless
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.In today's episode of The Queue, I give our Facebook page another shameless plug. Have you seen it? Yes? Good! Let's move on, then.Jonny Dale asked...I seem to remember a post on where to find all the +hit rating gear for casters, but I can't find this anywhere on WoWInsider search or Google. Anyone care to help?
WoW Insider Show live with Phaelia of Resto4Life tomorrow afternoon
Our weekly podcast (we're working on a new graphic for the new theme, don't worry) goes live again as usual tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern over on Ustream, and this week we are thrilled to welcome one of our favorite bloggers: Phaelia of Resto4Life. Listeners have requested some Resto talk, so we invited everyone's favorite tree Druid to come and let us know what things are like from the healer's perspective. And speaking of healers, we also invited a Priest and a Paladin along: Matt "Matticus" Low from World of Matticus (and our own Spritual Guidance column) will be on as a man of the cloth, and our producer Elizabeth Harper will be aboard as a woman of the plate. Looks like I'll have to rep Resto Shammy so we can get all the healers in the mix.Additionally, we'll be talking about patch 3.0.3, and all the chaos in the runup to the expansion, including where we're going to get our copies, and what we're going to do right after install. And we'll take a look back at the beta, and see if there's anything else we'd like to say about it one last time before we step into the same place on the live realms. If you've got questions or comments for the show, feel free to drop us an email at theshow at wowinsider dot com, and you might even hear it on the air.And of course you're welcome to join us during the recording for the live chat, our in-show polls, or a (hopefully not shortened this week) aftershow session with the guests. We'll be live at 3:30pm Eastern (time zone calc) on the Ustream page, or you can just join us right back here -- there's an embedded stream right after the break. See you then!
WoW Insider Show live on the air tomorrow
Once again, the WoW Insider Show is returning to the virtual airwaves, and this show is taking place in a very different world than last week: Turpster's Shadow Priest is 70, dogs and cats are living together, and I am out for the week. But worry not -- the very capable John "BigBearButt" Patricelli is stepping in to take on the hosting duties, and joining him will be the raid-ready Shadow Priest himself, Turpster (John, could you do me a favor and ask Turpster when he's going to start leveling his Paladin now?), along with another man with his own popular WoW blog, Matt "Matticus" Low. I'm sure they'll chat, as we always do, about all the big news from the World of Warcraft in the last week, including level 30 mounts, the various talent changes that have come down, and what's on deck for the Midsummer Fire Festival next week. Since I'm not around, they probably won't talk about Shamans at all, so you can look forward to that.And if there's anything else you want to ask them, it's easy and free -- just drop them a note at theshow@wow.com, and they may even answer your question live on the air. During the show, you can even join them in IRC for a live chat -- point your IRC client to irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel and make sure to say hi for me.Should be a "hum-dinger," as they say in the business. Well maybe they don't say it in the business, but I'm sure they say it somewhere. Tune in to WoW Radio tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 Eastern to hear BBB, Matticus, and Turpster take on the past week in Warcraft.
WoW Insider Show, Episode 41: Arenas, healers, and Blink for Hunters
This past week on the WoW Insider Show (a recording of which is now available over on WoW Radio), we were honored to welcome Matt "Matticus" Low to the show to talk about his career in WoW and his experience healing endgame raids. Amanda Dean was also in attendance with some Arena opinions, and Turpster and I rounded out the crew. We talked about: The fact that Turpster is now 69 on his Shadow Priest, and that next week, after the show, he's going to ding at a live event (stay tuned tomorrow for more details on how that's going down). How Blizzard changed the Death Knight descriptions, and whether that matters this early in the game Amanda's thought that Arena is broken, and how it might possibly be fixed again (as well as the various class representations in there and what's up with those) What we thought was interesting in the latest Blizzcast Plus, we answered reader email (including taking a little Blizzard-inspired quiz) and chatted with Matticus about how the popular Spiritual Guidance column is going. All in all, good show -- check it out on WoW Radio's website right now, or listen in (and feel free to give us a review, good or bad as long as it's honest) over on iTunes.And if you've got something you want us to talk about on the show, drop us an email at theshow@wow.com. We'll be back next week with Turpster's big ding event, and another show next Saturday afternoon at 3:30 Eastern.
