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Deathwing sculpture in progress
Ever since Blizzard first revealed Deathwing to us back at BlizzCon, that image of the dragon and that jaw has stuck in my head -- dragons are always dangerous (you know what happens when you meddle in their affairs), but Deathwing is a dragon in his own class. And apparently that picture also stuck in artist Kymba's head, too, because she's been working on (and documenting on Livejournal) an awesome sculpture of the beast himself.Obviously it's a work in progress, but Kymba has been doing a really thorough job covering just what she's doing with Sculpey (a brand of polymer clay). You can follow her own accounts on her Livejournal page (start over here), or check out the gallery below, in which we've compiled all of the pictures of the process so far. The jaw was made separately, and from what I can tell (I've never sculpted in my life), she used aluminum foil baked into the clay wrapped around a sturdier core. The whole thing looks great so far -- we can't wait to see what the finished product looks like. Stay tuned -- you'll probably see it all done in a future World of Warcrafts post.%Gallery-75365%
Searching for the most popular server
Kris over on the WoW LJ has an interesting question: what's the most popular server in the game? Blizzard never has (and likely never will) singled out one server as the most popular in the game, as the QQ that would ensue might bring the forums down (not to mention that it must change pretty often, as people transfer and reroll on other realms. It seems that everyone on a high population server thinks they must be top dog when they see queues during prime time, but the most widespread concrete numbers we have are probably from the unofficial Warcraft Realms census: they claim that, with over 35,000 characters on it, Whisperwind is number one.Of course, even that can't be trusted -- those numbers are picked up from the site's addon, all within the last 30 days, and it could just be that WR has more info about more people on that server. But at the same time, I'd guess that Warcraft Realms' numbers are in the ballpark, as long as you're talking about Yankee Stadium. Whisperwind, Cenarion Circle, Stormrage, Moon Guard, and Proudmoore are all big servers, I can promise you anecdotally, while Laughing Skull, Blood Furnace, and Malorne are definitely at the other end of the spectrum. As for a most popular realm, there probably isn't one specifically (it changes periodically, if not even at different times of the day). But if your realm is near the top of Warcraft Realms' list, it's probably busier than the others.
Hard modes and raider morale
Karl, writing over on the WoW Livejournal, has an interesting set of thoughts about hard modes and just how they work with raiders' morale. Hard modes are designed to give raiders something extra -- if you've conquered the normal modes of raids like Ulduar, hard modes are put in there by Blizzard to offer you some extra risk for a corresponding reward. But as they've become more and more routine, some raids are taking on the hard modes even before they've cleared the whole instance, leading up to a night of wiping on early hard modes, and then wiping on later progression. And wiping all night is never good for any raid's morale.Of course, this is one of the causes for the way the Crusaders' Coliseum in patch 3.2 is designed: instead of having both hard and normal modes constrained to one instance, you can run a 10 or 25-man instance in normal mode all the way, leaving the Heroic mode open when you're ready to do some wiping.But then again, think about what the mindset is here -- players are throwing themselves on early bosses' hard modes even when they haven't beaten the end bosses yet. It seems like most raids will take any opportunity they get for more loot, no matter how tough it is, and that's what's leading to all of this "glass chewing" Karl is talking about. Even if Blizzard gives players the option to run a normal instance without worrying about hard modes, won't players still just run Heroic anyway, for the better gear?
