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4 best Blizzard customer support videos
Blizzard is a fairly tech-savvy company. You can tell on account of this huge, massive game it runs. More importantly, though, Blizzard maintains a fairly robust online presence even outside of the game. It even keeps a fully stocked, awesome YouTube channel dedicated to Customer Support. The thing you might not realize about the videos is that they're awesome. I don't just mean that in the sense that Blizzard is putting good information out there; the videos themselves are well crafted, lots of fun, and brilliantly narrated. I'd like to make sure you're not missing out on any of the cool stuff. So let's review the best Blizzard support videos available on YouTube. Item Restoration The Item Restoration video above is probably my favorite video. It introduces the new Item Restoration service, which is a huge benefit all its own. The narrator really grabs this subject by the horns and runs with it. Of course, the shocked worgen is equally awesome, and I spent the day making my own shocked worgen face at myself in the mirror.
Phat Loot Phriday: Gilnean Raven
When we last left our heroes, they were packing to go to Pandaria. While Throgg and Lolegolas shove their belongings into mysterious blue boxes and bags of questionable size, let's take a jump across the pond and check in on the missing member of the precarious party. She gets cross if I ignore her for too long. Miranda pushed herself up on her elbows, peering around her spacious cage. She noticed immediately that the bamboo enclosure smelled fairly nice. If she was trapped in captivity, at least it was a relatively tidy captivity. "Hello?" she asked. Her voice was dry and cracked; the words came out as a croak. "Is anyone there?" "Good morning, Miranda," someone replied. "If it helps you relax, this isn't about you at all. You'll see I even have a gift for you. I wish you to be comfortable while you serve as bait." The shrouded figure came nearer, kneeling to slide a small bird through the cage. Miranda tried to get a look at the man, but mist and smoke kept her from making out much beside his robe. "That's a Gilnean Raven. It might turn out to be quite the fighter. I'm certain your druid will appreciate it. This raven is quite like a writing desk." "What is this about, then?" Miranda asked. She reached out to the bird and was pleased when it jumped to her wrist immediately. "What's going?" The shadowed man turned back to his reading. "It's an assignment, nothing personal. I will get Throgg very angry, and while he's in the middle of his Throgg-smash routine ... I will kill him." Phat Loot Phriday brings you the scoop on some of the most ... interesting ... loot in the World of Warcraft, often viewed through the eyes of the stalwart Throgg and indelible Lolegolas. Suggest items you think we should feature by emailing mikeg@wowinsider.com.
How to transfer to a roleplay realm
A roleplay realm recently suffered a little bit of drama when a very large guild suddenly took up residence. While we could talk about the details of that little explosion, those details aren't actually the point. I see this happen all the time. For one reason or another, a huge group of folks spot some greener grass on an RP server and go there. The RP server sees this huge influx of people and freak out, worried about RP griefing, pun names, and other misery. I see this happen with such regularity that you can nearly set your watch by it. I'm convinced no one is in the wrong, per se. It's just a matter of communication, expectations, and general fear. So with that in mind, if you happen to be in a large guild getting ready to transfer to a roleplay server, here are some tips to make the transition smooth, easy, and friendly.
The returning-to-WoW checklist
Maybe you're just coming back from vacation, or maybe you were having a baby. Maybe you were just super busy at work. Certainly, you weren't dallying with those other games. Whatever it was that kept you away from Azeroth, now that time has passed and you can get back to some good old-fashioned, well-balanced WoW. Firing up your character for the first time in a while can be a little disorienting. It's worse than forgetting where you left your keys. What does this button do? Where's my hat?! Why is a murloc chewing on me?! Let's alleviate some of that initial logging-in-the-first-time confusion with a handy checklist. Just go down the list and make sure all your gear is where you left it.
How to handle abusive and negative players
One of the nice things about the WoW community is that it tends to be full of friendly, kind people. There are plenty of folks in the game -- and on the forums, even! -- who are happy to lend a helping hand. It can be fun to chat with strangers, joke, and share in a bit of camaraderie. But people are people, and sometimes you will encounter a troll or just mean-spirited n'er-do-well. It can be a heck of a souring experience to cruise through a few random groups and then run face-first into a big ball of negativity. It's almost inevitable you'll cross paths with someone who wields racist, sexist, or just plain foul language. While I wish we could tap a magic wand and make all that negativity just go away, that's just not possible. That's the bad news. The good news is that there are a few things you can do about it.
How to replace a keyfob authenticator with a smartphone Battle.net authenticator
I've had my authenticator for years. Taking the sound advice of persons wiser than me, I picked up an authenticator way before it was cool. No hackers or n'er-do-wells were getting into my account and sharding my purples! Those purples vindicate my life choices, and criticizing my life choices is my wife's job, not some random stranger who scammed my password from Facebook! But like many things in life, this authenticator too must pass. In this specific case, this authenticator must pass between the jaws of my dog. It didn't work so well after Sylvanas got done unleashing some Dark Puppy-level fury on it. If you too find yourself needing to replace your trusty old authenticator, here's how you get it done. In this case, we're replacing the old sexy keyfob with a new, nearly-as-sexy iPhone authenticator app.
3 reasons for casual players to be excited about Mists of Pandaria
While this column is nominally titled WoW Rookie, if you'll pardon the redundancy, it actually tends to serve as a cross-section of content for new, casual, and (as I like to call them) play-a-little players. It's for folks who don't really have hours on hours each week to devote to the hobby. After all, when baby's gotta eat, baby's gotta eat; can't nurse three hours later just so you can do the hard mode first. With that in mind, Mists of Pandaria brings a lot to recommend it to our crowd. While it's tempting to give in to scuttlebutt and think this expansion is mostly for the hardcore crowd, I promise that Blizzard hasn't forgotten about its loyal, beloved casual playerbase -- because boy, oh boy, is there a lot for us to love! This topic comes up this week from reader Angela, who wrote: I've been reading in forums about how MoP is mostly for the raider and hardcore crowd, that Blizzard isn't catering to 'casubads' anymore. Is there any reason for a full-time worker and mom to care about MoP? I promise, Angela, there are reasons to care. Let's talk about them.
What every brand new WoW player should know
Last week, we started talking to the brand new players in the game. These are the folks who just installed WoW for the first time. They're so fresh to the game they have to sit through all the cinematics, figure out a username and password, and spend time reading every tooltip as it appears. While the in-game instructions in WoW are pretty good, there's still some basic context to the whole MMORPG genre that can help out. Let's review some more of the basic assumptions that a new player should know. Setting these expectations can help the starting experience make a lot more sense.
Getting started with World of Warcraft
We've been talking about a lot of high-falutin' concepts lately, like PvP and protecting the healer and killing the healer and so on. But having started a few new games in the last month, I've been able to ride the noob train and get a new look on my old, comfortable car, the World of Warcraft. While getting smacked in the face with the cold, wet noodle of noobdom, I came to realize how many of WoW's most basic concepts we take for granted. At the most basic level, consider the NPC bad guys we call mobs. Do you kill them? Fight them? Run away? Consider if WoW were the first video game you'd ever really played. We all know Mario killed turtles for points, but bypassing those same turtles was perfectly fine. Is the same true in WoW? Some mobs surrender to your unassailable assault -- do they all? Should that be a regular tactic? This basic dynamic is something we take for absolutely granted, and it's the very first "What the hell am I doing here?" moment in WoW. So let's jump all the way back and consider some of the truly most basic assumptions about the game.
What are multiboxers and how do you fight one in PvP?
Multiboxing is kind of an odd phenomena that doesn't repeat anywhere in WoW. It's definitely weird. My point isn't that people who multibox are some kind of weird mutant freaks or anything. Rather, the point is that as often as you hear about it and for all the vitriol often directed at people who multibox, you'd think a small army of multiboxers camp each realm, stamping out flowers and spewing vile curses at the authorities. That clearly isn't the case. While multiboxers are very rare, especially the folks running an entire party in a single Battleground, they're still fairly notable. That's because one person controlling multiple accounts coordinates sending an awful lot of damage down your pie-hole all at one time. A good multiboxer will just plain ruin your day. You won't see multiboxers often, but you'll definitely remember the encounter. Multiboxing is the practice in which a single player controls multiple characters at once. The fine technology of how that player pulls that trick off is a little different for each player, of course. In general, they string together several accounts to one keyboard. That means all the characters act with amazing precision -- five damaging spells, five heals, five actions all at the same time.
Shifting Perspectives: Building a better Insect Swarm for Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid. Greetings, druids. Last week we talked about the new changes that had been made to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, which held a few good changes for us. This week I want to focus in on two criticisms that I've had growing for a very long time. It's no shock to anyone that reads my column or follows me on Twitter that I abhor the new direction of Insect Swarm. I've talked about this topic before, but I want to discuss it further. Looking into the why In the essence of fairness, I feel that I should go into why it is that I believe Blizzard is tweaking Insect Swarm the way that they are. To start with, Insect Swarm has been an extremely problematic spell ever since it was created. In TBC, it didn't deal enough damage in order to be worth using, the same was even true at the start of WotLK, and it nearly fell off the map again late in the expansion as well. It hasn't been until Cataclysm that Insect Swarm has finally become a sold piece of our rotation, and even now it's still the weaker of the two DoTs.
How to heal in Battlegrounds
We've been talking about Battlegrounds a lot lately. That makes a lot of sense, since those Battlegrounds can be a refuge for the casual or limited-time crowd -- not to mention, since we're stuck in the purgatory between expansions, now's the time to get your PvP on. An indispensably important part of the Battlegrounds is having capable, willing healers. Just a small handful of powerful, practiced healers can make your Battleground team invincible. When you are the healer, you get to decide who lives and who dies on your team. You extend your warm, golden glow around the mere DPS who clamor to bathe in your power, and by means of that glow, provide victory to your team. I might be engaging in a little hyperbole, but you get the point. A good healer can be incredibly powerful in Battlegrounds. You'll find the role engaging and complex; your greatest enemy will be tunnel vision, self-reliance, and the ability to communicate on the fly. Let's talk about how you can maximize the power of your time as a healer.
Scattered Shots: New hunter MoP talent updates
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. Last week, Blizzard updated the Mists of Pandaria talent page, giving us a new look at what it's working on for class customization in advance of its mid-March press tour. We hunters got a peek at some awesome new stuff going on with the class, with improvements both in PvP and PvE. The hunter news from this preview falls into three general categories: Our three new level 90 talents were revealed. We saw some meaningful changes to existing talents. We saw some changes to other classes that could impact the hunter class. While we're seeing a bunch of new hunter info in this update, Blizzard did go out of the way to point out that it is still working hard on the hunter class and it's not as far along as some other classes. In particular, we don't yet have any new class abilities or new spec abilities for level 90. We also don't know what route Blizzard's going to go with our pet talents. With that in mind, let's take a look at all the new stuff we did learn!
Encrypted Text: Rogue poisons dramatically redesigned in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. Throw out everything you know about rogue poisons. No, we need to go deeper than that. Throw out everything you know about rogues altogether. In the past few days, we've seen more blue posts on the official rogue forums than we'd seen since Cataclysm's launch. Poisons have been at the heart and soul of the rogue kit from day one. Even though parts of the poison system have changed over the years, the general concept has always remained the same. Let me blow your mind: In Mists, you can have two poisons on each of your weapons at once. Let me do it again: All poison proc rates will be percentage-based. And a third time: Poisons are no longer applied to your individual weapons but to both weapons at once. What does it even mean to put your poisons on both hands at once? What in the world am I supposed to write this column about if nobody's asking which hand to put Deadly Poison on any more? I'm going to slip and tell some new rogue that IP/DP is the best, and he's going to laugh and call me an old man.
Totem Talk: Mists of Pandaria resto talent calculator update
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The last few updates to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator has seen some updates for the other healer types in WoW, but restoration shaman were left untouched from what we saw at BlizzCon 2011. That fact alone was starting to concern many of us, as we eagerly wait to see what we'll get for new spells and what we'll see our talents morph into. Well, this time around, the latest update to the talent calculator certainly has some things for the restoration-minded shaman to enjoy. Talents have been moved around -- some removed and others just reorganized -- and we get our first glimpse at a new spell.
Lichborne: New Mists of Pandaria talent updates for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. As I'm sure you've heard by now, Blizzard treated us to a nice new chunk of news this past week with an update to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator. Death knights received some new talents and new skills as well as adjustments to old ones that definitely deserve some analysis. We'll start by looking at the talent tiers, then move on to some of the new modified skills we're seeing in this build. Level 15 begins our journey with a couple pieces of very welcome news. Outbreak is back to a general class skill, once again taking its place at level 81 for all three specs. In its place for tier 1 talents is the old-school Unholy Blight, in all its AoE glory. That's right, you can once again have that awesome semi-permanent damage aura. Alas, this welcome change is accompanied by the similar removal of Corpse Explosion in favor of Vile Spew, an ability that will explode an undead minion for AoE damage and disease infection.
Spiritual Guidance: Priests, shields and AoE healing in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. If you recall, last November when Blizzard released its official talent calculators for Mists of Pandaria, I declined to make a full comment. At the time, the calculators seemed incomplete, with various abilities absent from the level-by-level breakdown for each spec. Without a comment from the blues on the matter, I didn't want to speculate on all of it until I felt I was looking at something more concrete. Well, last week it seems we finally got something more concrete. The calculators don't seem that much different, mind you, but a few comments from the developers answer a lot of questions priests might have had about the direction of the class' design. Let's take a look. Question: Why didn't the priest tree change? Answer: We are still in development. It is a challenge, when giving players a sneak peak at work in progress, to decide when to release what we have versus waiting to accumulate even more changes. Question: Do Discipline priests have Prayer of Healing or not? Answer: Our current design direction is this: Holy does AE healing with Prayer of Healing, and Discipline heals with (a much more powerful than today) Holy Nova. Divine Aegis would work with Holy Nova under this model. However, please see the question above. The priest tree is still in heavy development. source
Shifting Perspectives: Feral thoughts on the new talents and abilities
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! Because there are just not enough cute cats around here! This is Hello Kitty Online, right? Where we gossip about how cute our cats are? This is my oldest and grumpiest, Hailey Reagan, in a decidedly non-grumpy pic. ...Oh. Oh. WoW. Right. Anyway, news! Finally! I've returned from my brief hiatus, and happily, there's lots to discuss. Blizzard has updated the Mists of Pandaria calculator with tons of new info, so let's take a look at what we could be seeing Soon(TM). Baseline abilities I won't cover everything that's changed, but here are a few tweaks that I thought were interesting for feral druids: Bear Hug This is now available to all druids at level 22 and is essentially the replacement for Bash. The damage (30% of your HP channeled over 3 seconds) is fairly decent; I can definitely see this being used as a finisher in PvP for trolling purposes. Personally, I'm just going to macro /hug to it. Thrash This former Bear ability is now able to be used in all forms, so we might see a change to our AoE rotation from Swipe, Swipe, Swipe, zzz. Symbiosis This ability probably deserves its own column; a blue post revealed some more details on how it would be implemented. Three abilities signposted as likely to be received are Feign Death, Frost Nova, and Soul Swap. The first two aren't that interesting, obviously, but if I can SS my bleeds? Hello, Mists, you have my attention.
4 major updates for holy paladins in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. Blizzard recently promised to release a flurry of Mists of Pandaria information in March, but apparently it's opened the gates early. The Mists of Pandaria talent calculator and ability list received a massive update this week, giving us new info on the talents and spells that holy paladins can look forward to in Mists. In addition, the Blizzard community managers have been answering questions about the new data at a rapid-fire rate. Holy paladins have a lot to look forward to in Mists. It's clear that the developers have been looking at our weaknesses as healers, as several of our long-standing issues have been addressed. While we've always had a wide variety of utility abilities, until recently, holy paladins really only had single-target heals at their disposal. With the introduction of the revamped Holy Radiance in late Cataclysm and now the new talent options we'll in Mists, our base healing toolbox is looking more and more complete.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Considering the Mists talent calculator
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. We now have a new version of the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator to discuss. While we've covered the Mists talents and abilities before, every new iteration of the design process brings us new elements to consider. What we're effectively being presented is a snapshot of the future through the lens of current design, giving us a chance to muse about what warriors will be doing and not doing. One of the things that jumps out immediately when considering the new talents is that the current capstones Bladestorm and Shockwave (as well as Avatar), which had been gained at level 90 before, are now level 60 abilities. I'm not actually surprised by this change, but I am pleased by it. Those are abilities people can currently get by around the end of Outland, so making them level 60 talents means they'll be useful for leveling characters again. Let's go over what can be gleaned from the calculator update and discuss what it all means.
