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The Shadow Diaries: In which I take a shortcut
Back in November of last year, I wrote a post for the Spiritual Guidance column called "The shadow diaries." In it, I pledged that I would recount my experiences of leveling a brand-new shadow priest. However, as you may have noticed (or not), that never happened. There's always too many things to do in this crazy virtual world of ours (not to mention that other, brighter world outside), so poor Hieronymus ended up getting neglected.Why am I talking about a series of posts I didn't write? Well, I may not have had the fortitude to level another priest all the way to 70, on a strange server no less, but eventually two realizations came together. I already have a priest at level 70, and I'm doing a lot more soloing than grouping with her these days. I'd recently moved a few points in my long-held 23/38/0 spec over to the Holy damage talents, which sped up my dailies a bit. But then I thought, why not go all the way?
T-Mobile's Shadow II revealed in spy pic
Just when we were getting used to T-Mobile's Shadow, it appears we're going to have to make room in our pockets for its successor... the Shadow II. Picking up almost exactly where the first iteration left off, this grainy spy shot reveals that its going to be more of the same for the revamp, save for some new rounded edges and oh-so-chic reflective finish. We'll assume the company is sticking to the plan with a slide out numeric keypad, but you never know; they could be hiding a QWERTY under there... or some kind of weird Gremlin.[Thanks, Jason]
Hybrid Theory: Brutallus and You
Every week, Alex Ziebart comes to you with Hybrid Theory. A column with... theories about hybrids, I guess. I mean, that's what it says at least. I guess it could be something else, but probably not. Honestly, you should probably just read it and find out for yourself. In the past here on Hybrid Theory, we've discussed what Hybrids are capable of doing in a raid, as far as beneficial talents and utilities. We talked about the fact that a few well-placed hybrids in your raid can take your DPS from 'good' to 'horrifyingly good.' All of this comes to the front again in a boss that many high-end raid groups are clashing against right now: Brutallus.If you haven't read anything on this boss yet, it's the single largest gear check in WoW yet. It's Burning Crusade's Patchwerk, mostly. To beat Brutallus, you need roughly 29,000 sustained DPS across your entire raid. If you don't pull that off, you hit his enrage timer and he destroys all of you. Simple as that! If you're lucky you can burn off a final two or three percent of his health after the enrage, but that's about as far as you go. That three percent is about 300,000 health, so don't get too confident.
Hybrid Theory: What can I do?
Welcome to another installment of Hybrid Theory, wherein columnist Alex Ziebart assures the world that he does not, in fact, hate Retribution Paladins. In fact, he raids with a Retribution Paladin. Really. He does. Pinky swear. Let's face it, folks. A lot of raid leaders have very little idea what they're doing when they're brand new to the raiding thing. I was there once, too. Until you have some experience in the 25-man raids, you have very little idea how group synergy works or anything of that sort. As a hybrid, especially one specced in a tree other than your healing tree, this could cause you some issues when looking to break into raiding from the ground level, rather than filling a gap in an existing raid that generally knows what's what.You will most likely find that you'll need to sell yourself to raid leaders. What can you bring to the table? What can you do that a mage can't? What can you do that a rogue can't? The answer: Quite a bit! First thing to keep in mind, though, is that as a hybrid, you will probably not do as much damage as the other DPS classes in the raid. Healing specced, you will keep up just fine. Damage specced? Well, you won't keep up on every encounter. That's okay though. You don't need to. Why? Because you specifically allow those other classes to meet their maximum potential.I'll go through each of the damage specs one by one. Tanks, healers, sorry. You come next week. I'm writing a column, not a novel!
Hybrid Theory: What's a hybrid? v2.0
Hybrid Theory returns under the banner of column-newb Alex Ziebart. Incredibly biased opinions await you. If you are reading this, you have already been made a victim of his inability to create interesting graphics. No World of Warcraft players were harmed in the creation of the previous image, though that does not mean it won't hurt you.When I decided on my topic for today, I was mighty excited. A fire raged within me, and my fingers flew over the keyboard as soon as I sat down at the computer. My first column! Awesome! Yes! About three paragraphs in, I realized I should probably make sure my predecessor, Jason Lotito, hadn't done the topic yet. Unfortunately, he did. Fortunately, I completely disagree with what he said in every possible way.Perfect.What is a hybrid class? The basic answer is pretty simple: A class with multiple viable roles. Paladins, Druids and Shaman are obvious examples of a hybrid class. If you disagree with the fact that they're hybrids, you must be playing the wrong game. Holy, Retribution, Protection. Feral, Balance, Restoration. Elemental, Enhancement, Restoration. All of them are viable specs, especially in raiding. As fun as it is to mock Retribution Paladins, even they have a place in the end-game.Basically, Shamadruidins are hybrids. Don't try to argue that they aren't because you will lose.
Spiritual Guidance: Mind Vision of 2007
Every Sunday, Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class with Spiritual Guidance. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here! One of the first things you'll notice is I'm neither Eliah or Elizabeth. My name doesn't even begin with "E". It's probably not even be Sunday, either. Crazy? Yep, but that's how we roll. It's been quite the year for Priests, just like most other classes. About this time last January, the big ol' Burning Crusade expansion rolled out, essentially taking WoW's most loved clothies (ok, maybe just mine) and turning them on their ears. Been a while since you thought about BC: The Early Months? Let's take a stroll down memory lane...
Keepin' it real fake, part XCVIII: T-Mobile Shadow gets shadowed
Well, would you look at that. If not for the gaudy packaging, $69.99 price tag and blatant Oasis Media branding, we'd swear the Playr was a T-Mobile Shadow (or HTC's P3300, we guess). Yep, this knockoff does a fairly decent job of mirroring its inspirer, sports 2GB of storage and a miniSD expansion slot, comes with 35 free eMUSIC downloads and includes a built-in media player for good measure. Interestingly, we get the feeling that this thing won't actually send or receive calls, but if you're quick, no one will even notice.[Thanks, Rick]Update: Turns out this thing is actually the MachSpeed Oasis Video Player, and is readily available on Amazon (among other places). Still, it could stand some originality in the design department. [Thanks, Rob!]
Spiritual Guidance: The shadow diaries
As you might expect for someone who writes a Priest column, my main is a priest. I've been Holy for quite some time (enough that it's starting to make me feel old), and I feel like I know the Holy game play style pretty well. I even leveled Holy from 60 to 70, shortly after Burning Crusade came out, and it was a blast. And I love healing. But lately I've been hearing the call of the dark side: I want to play Shadow.But this leaves me with a conundrum. I can't really get my Shadow on without abandoning (albeit temporarily) my Holy nature. Or can I? After all, we get up to 50 characters per account; there's no reason I can't delete one of those level one alts I made to talk to somebody for a story and make a brand-new priest, destined for Shadow, instead!So that's just what I did. I had other motivations, of course; just wanting to play Shadow probably wouldn't be enough to get me to trudge through the 1–60 levels yet again. I've never played much Horde, so I'd like to see how the other half lives a bit. I've never played a Blood Elf at all, and I'd always heard those zones were well designed. And I wanted to hang out with some people on their server, which would mean rolling a new character anyway. Several factors conspired, and Hieronymus of Draenor was born (that link is giving me an error right now, but I assume it'll go away).
Engadget Mobile goes hands-on with the T-Mobile Shadow
Head on over to Engadget Mobile to catch the new T-Mobile Shadow live and in person. We hear the slider action is a little addictive, so don't be surprised if those slackers take the rest of the day off to enjoy their new toy.
Hands-on with the T-Mobile Shadow
Well we're sold. T-Mobile looks to be prepping the Shadow as a launch-off point for a whole line of consumer-friendly fancyphones that can finally give the Sidekick some competition in T-Mobile's lineup, and this first Shadow certainly doesn't miss its mark. The HTC hardware itself is pretty much spot on in every aspect, with a bright screen, solid slider action, thumb-friendly tactile keypad, smooth scroll wheel and a pocket-friendly form factor. We can't say we're crazy about this copper color, but it's subtle enough, and it's really a question of taste. Typing was a breeze on the SureType-esque keyboard, and while we wish the soft keys were a bit bigger, that's about our only caveat. It is a bit of a chore to slide open the phone and close it without resting your thumb on the screen, so smudgephobia types might have some difficulty, but we're basically resigned to that fate with any phone this glossy. Unfortunately, while T-Mobile has done its best at wrapping up Windows Mobile 6 with a glossy interface, it's still Windows Mobile, and we found the whole interface a bit sluggish. The main screen is also a bit short on data, since T-Mobile has monopolized it with those fave five. WiFi was a snap to set up, but that doesn't mean we're entirely OK with EDGE data as 2007 is coming to a close, and the slow processor wasn't helping our browsing experience either. If those few foibles can be overlooked, this could be your ticket out of smartphone monotony when it hits on October 31st for $149.99.%Gallery-9336%
The T-Mobile Shadow, October 31 for $149.99
Wing who? T-Mobile today has announced the long-rumored Shadow, a Windows Mobile 6 Standard device that looks not just better than its Wing stablemate, but arguably better than just about any comparably-equipped smartphone on the market today. Besides the "slick, slider design" and a juiced version of the standard Windows Mobile 6 UI, the Shadow features a rotating jog dial front and center, 2 megapixel camera, WiFi, and a new version of T-Mobile's myFaves interface allowing users to call, email, text, or MMS the peeps in their "fave five." Like what you see? If you do, good, because it turns out this is just the first in a whole line of upcoming Shadow-branded phones for the carrier -- a line that'll be focusing on multimedia connectivity and slanting the work / life balance a little more to the "life" side than some of HTC's and T-Mobile's other smart devices (ahem, Wing, we're looking straight at you). Grab the Shadow starting this Wednesday in "sage" or "copper" for a surprisingly reasonable $149.99 on two-year contract. %Gallery-9312%
Is the Shadow set to be T-Mobile's new hot brand?
While we're waiting for the Shadow's official unofficial launch date of October 31st, BGR has served up a couple other sweet little morsels on this lovely little device. The specs are looking decent with Windows Mobile 6 -- sporting some exclusive interface -- WiFi, 2 megapixel camera, OMAP CPU at 201 MHz, 128 MB RAM, and a QVGA screen. According to rumor, the Shadow is set to become T-Mob's next hot brand for those that no longer -- and really, did anybody ever? -- see the Sidekick as chic. Pricing has apparently been set at $149 after $50 rebate on a two year commitment with whispers of an exclusive $9.99 unlimited email plan in the works. The Boy Genius also reports that we could well see a Shadow II in the future, but we'd be happy to simply get our hands on this one first.
T-Mobile Shadow unboxed, still not released
Here it is again, the HTC Juno / Pheobus / Dopod C750 all boxed up in its soon to be announced T-Mobile Shadow branding. A tipster over at The Boy Genius Report claims that it might be sporting a VGA screen like we've already heard and that center-button is actually a scroll-wheel which serves as a 4-way navigation pad. The green and brown colors are said to "look great" with your fall wardrobe while sporting a soft-touch finish around back to keep this slider, sliding in your hand and not off the tabletop. BGR's got a full gallery just beyond the read link.
Playing the AH on Patch Day
Richard and Paul are both way smarter (and by consequence, way more rich) than I am. They thought ahead, took notes on all the ingredients for the brand new recipes in 2.2, and had all the supplies sitting at high prices on the AH yesterday, ready to be sold to anyone who didn't want to wait to make the new items. Beautiful. I'm jealous-- wish I'd thought of it first.Soulcloth is the big winner, it seems-- it requires Netherweave (which pretty much everyone has), and tons of Soul Essences, which basically drop like candy in Karazhan. If I recall correctly, Soul Essences have sold ok but not great in the past (at least on my server), and they probably still won't sell well, once everyone's made everything they want. But for the next few days, while everyone's learning the new recipes, you'd probably do well to clean out your Soul Essence inventory.Primal Shadow and Primal Air are also doing well from the patch, but since those are Primals, they're fairly rare anyway-- if they were really everywhere (like, say, they dropped off of every demon in the world), Blizzard would change things. But over the next few days (and probably every few days after a big set of crafting changes, so keep an eye out for 2.3 profession news), there's lots of money to be made.
Build Shop: Priest 14/0/47 (interview with Skosiris)
Welcome, talent fans! This time we're going to try something a little different with Build Shop: an interview. We've got Wowhead co-founder and primary website developer Skosiris to talk a bit about his priest build, so check it out and let me know what you think of the format. For the uninitiated, Wowhead is an excellent WoW database site for looking up information on equipment, mobs, quests, spells, etc. I recently started playing Dungeon Runners, and Wowhead is possibly what I miss most about WoW. It's that good.Skosiris is getting his Shadow on with this solo/5-man oriented spec. He's a relatively casual player, having never raided, and doesn't have time to play tons. I like the build well for its intended purpose.Eliah Hecht, WoW Insider: Hey, want to talk about your build?Skosiris of Wowhead: Sure thing. It's been a little while since I last played my priest, but this should be fun.Likewise. So, do you have a link for the build?14/0/47, Amory profile here
Rumor alert: Pretty much everything you could think of
Hey, rumors are fun! We see two possibilities regarding this list of Wii games that "will be coming out" according to WiiYou.com. First: they scooped the entire world and got an exclusive look at a list of unannounced Wii games that nobody has heard anything at all about. Second, they didn't. We're looking at the list, and it seems to be about half educated guessing and half dreaming. Call us cynics, but we're going to wait for verification before we go put our money down on F-Zero or Metroid Xterme.Of course Sega Nerds latched on to the listing for Shadow the Hedgehog 2, but, in our minds, that's not the biggest news item on the list. We'd be more interested in hearing about the two Zelda games. Check after the post break for the full list.
World of motecrafting post 2.1
A couple of interesting Mote related changes have popped up in the patch. I was well aware of the Mote of Shadow change-- those babies are now dropping not off of demons, but only off of void creatures (you can find tons of them in the southern part of Hellfire Peninsula, and in small pockets in many instances). Which makes sense, but makes you wonder why they dropped off of demons in the first place-- or why it matters which one they drop off of at all.The other change was a little more hidden in the patch notes, and most players didn't realize it would be happening until they saw the drops: Essences are now dropping in Outland in the same place that Motes are dropping. You remember Essences-- they're the elemental components of many recipes found on the Azeroth side of the Dark Portal. A few players were unhappy that Essences were dropping instead of Motes, until Drysc confirmed that Essences are actually dropping in addition to Motes-- it's not a matter of either/or at all. Essences are completely extra.And of course that'll have an effect on the economy. Right now, Essences are selling for up to 1g a pop on most AHs (Update: and even higher on other servers, sometimes up to 15g apiece), but they still only vendor for 4s, which is pennies compared to even most gray drops in Outland. And that price will probably drop anyway, considering the market is about to be flooded with them. One solution is to raise the vendor price. And another solution, say a few enterprising players, would be to give Alchemists a Transmute Essence to Mote spell, either at a 2-to-1 exchange rate, or a long-ish cooldown, that would set the economy on these little things right. Clearly there's a need for having Essences around (how else could you enchant firey weapon, right?), but it looks like Blizzard could have put a little more thought into their effect on the economy.
Revisiting respec costs
We've covered the idea of changing respec costs (and even having more than one talent build) before, but the issue continues to get play-- Good has posted a very in-depth analysis of respec costs and why they need to be lowered or done away with completely.Good claims that the problem with respec costs has to do with the tanking and healing classes. The DPS classes-- Mages, Hunters, Rogues, Warlocks-- can fill their role in any spec, but tanks and healers, Good claims, have to be raid specced to do well in a raiding environment, and putting respec costs in the game just creates a barrier to keep them from playing other parts of the game.To the normal arguments, Good has answers. Lots of people say losing respec costs will just create cookie-cutter builds, but he says it will actually allow for diversity within groups-- instead of having two holy priests, one can switch to shadow. And for those who say 50g to change respecs isn't much (especially considering how much money is in Outland), he says then it shouldn't be in the game in the first place-- you're just burdening those classes who need to change to enjoy the game.Still other respec cost suggestions include allowing them to be paid for with BG tokens-- to let PvPers have the chance to switch back. Unfortunately for Good, I don't see it happening. Blizzard wants you to choose a spec and stick with it-- I'm known throughout my guild as a resto Shaman, and that's the way they want it (even if I have to switch to my Rogue to do PvP). The 50g respec cost isn't much, but it'll keep most players from switching, while still allowing those who really feel they need to switch to do so without too much trouble. People who want it all won't like hearing it, but I think respec costs are "working as intended," and will stay so for a while.[ via Paladin Sucks ]
Sonic Boss Attack mode on Marketplace
Sonic the Hedgehog has a a few pieces of new content available on Xbox Live Marketplace. If you enjoyed the boss battles found in the game with, you might be interested in this. You can download, for 150 MS points each, "Boss Attack"s for each of the game's lead hedgehogs. Apparently, if you've completed Sonic, Shadow, or Silver's respective episode, you can use this content for what seems to be a game mode akin to Heavy Weapon's Boss Blitz, but for individual characters. Do you play the game, and would you pick this up if you do?
Shadowrun PC cross-platform requires Live Gold
In the latest Shadowrun trailer, there is a little snippet that you Games for Windows users may want to pay attention to. We all know that to play Shadowrun's Xbox 360 version online, you're going to need an Xbox Live Gold account. Likewise, to play Shadowrun cross-platform on Vista, you're going to need a Gold Live account for Windows. At this point, there hasn't been any pricing announced with regards to Gold Live accounts on Vista, so there's no telling what may be the better deal. Also, given that they explicitly state "cross platform", that may mean that PC only servers may be playable with Silver Live accounts and will be free of charge. Interesting food for thought. Do any of you plan on playing Shadowrun on your PC?[Via Joystiq]
