Ghostcrawler to substantially change talent trees in Cataclysm
Ghostcrawler, one of the Blizzard employees responsible for the current design as well as upcoming changes in World of Warcraft, had this to say recently on the forums: 1) We are changing talent trees, in some cases substantially. The major focus is pruning out boring but valuable talents that passively increase say damage or healing. 2) A secondary focus is to fix the clunky areas (e.g. warlocks having two conflicting range increasing talents). We’re not going to remove old favorites or radically change the focus of the trees. You will definitely have to rethink your builds however. 3) Because you earn passive bonuses just for spending points in the tree, those fun, niche or utility talents won’t seem as expensive as they do today.
Weekly fun WoW community links
Here are some interesting links from the general World of Warcraft community which have been promoted by the EU official WoW website.  Check them out! World of War have an interview up with World of Warcraft player: Adrianne Curry. http://wow.incgamers.com/blog/comments/celebs-playing-world-of-warcraft-adrianne-curry-interview/ TheBurningCrusade.pl have some nice updates this week. They have just recently released their new talent calculator, and a translated version of the story of Invincible.
Update your Flash – Now!
ATTENTION!  I have been told that there are multiple advertisements going around, disguised as harmless internet advertising, when in fact they are trojan embedded Flash files.  These specific flash advertisements were crafted specifically to key log World of Warcraft Accounts and may be disguised as advertisements for things OTHER than gold farming websites.  I’ve been told that these trojans are automatically injected into your PC as noted in this security bulletin released by Adobe a couple months ago. If you haven’t already then you should update your Flash on your PC to version WIN 10,0,42,34 immediately!   To find your current flash version, visit
Night elf Mohawk is gone – finally!
If you were like me, desperately clicking away the Nightelf Mohawk from each of your multiboxed teams due to ill will over the icky face, worry no more!  Blizzard has finally removed it from the game! Ancilorn from Blizzard has stated: You’ve pitied and you’ve been pitied, but the time has come for the Night Elf Mohawk to pack up his Mohawk Grenades and move on. You looked goooood while his visit lasted, Azeroth, but his work here is done…for now.
Blizzard speaks up on recent patch issues
Blizzard put together an extensive list of issues in WoW that they recognize and are looking to patch.  One of them that I have feel repeated victim to is the Uldaman bugs whereas you cannot combine the 2 items required to open up one of the boss doors.   For new players who are in Uldaman for ~5 levels of their life, this can be extremely bothersome. General Issues Logging out inside a battleground and logging back in after the BG is completed will cause characters to be unable to queue using the Looking for Dungeon System. Spamming the Auto Attack button causes the
Blizzard announces PVP Resilience Changes
It was announced today that there will be a major change to resilience, which is being hotfixed into the game as we approach the new arena season. The change is expected to be in place for the duration of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion; which we take to mean it will not carry over into Cataclysm. This change will “double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players,” according to Bornakk. Players will see a 10% to 20% reduction in damage taken. However, this change will not affect critical strike chances or critical strike damage. If healing becomes too over powered with this change, Blizzard has a “PvP only solution”
Dual Multiboxing – Multiboxing Blackfathom Deeps 2x Priest 3x Hunters
Tim and Rob’s Priest and Hunter team had a ball running through Blackfathom Deeps (BFD) on their team of hunters and priests.  The team consists of the following: Tim:  2x Priests – Holy Spec Rob:  3x Hunters – BM Spec (Pet spec’d for tanking) The general strategy was to run in, raise hell with aggro, and have the pets tank everything while the Hunters DPS’d with multishot a bunch.  At the same time, the Priests would go nuts casting Holy Nova, both for DPS and for healing. Check out the video below of the actual live run
Blizzard developer Q+A via Twitter!
Today the Blizzard team consisting of Bornakk, Ghostcrawler, Aratil,  had a Q+A session via Twitter and the results are some really great insight onto things coming in the game.  Check this out! Q. If damage and healing is too much per health ratio, then why don’t you have battlegrounds/arenas give a -30% damage/healing debuff? A. We have been talking about solutions like that. It might feel a bit awkward, but it might also solve the problem and maybe it’s okay in the last season before an expansion to experiment a little bit. Q. Is there talk of a fire shield spell for elemental shaman to use like water shield for restoration shaman? A. Not at this time. Q. Do you still have plans to implement guild housing? A. Guild housing isn’t a priority. Aside from the huge development involved it gets people out of cities and into these private areas other players can’t see. We like cities to feel populated. But I’m not sure anyone expected WoW to be going as strong as it is after five years, so who knows in the future.
Blizzard to make resilience more important in Arena
The Blizzard forums are typically a breeding ground for QQing of all sorts, but today I read a very interesting post, and an even more interesting response from Blizzard. “This is just a question I’ve been wondering about and that is how has burst gotten to be so high? I’ve been watching some of the BC pvp vids and the damage seemed significant but never this crazy “global or be globaled” stuff we see currently. Were there any reasons or factors that contributed to Burst getting so high or is it just the natural trend of things?” To which Blizzard responded (in 2 posts): “We think everything is a little too intense right now, almost like playing the game on fast forward. Yes, damage can come in too quickly, but that is partially because healing is also so huge that without some amount of burst, it would seem as though nobody would ever die. It’s as if players are either at 100% health or 0% health, and very infrequently effective in between.
Multiboxing Stockades with 2 multiboxers
A little over a week ago, Tim and Rob decide to build a new team of multiboxers with the intent to play together on the new team as much as possible.  The team is built around PVE and PVP, with PVP being more of the focus.  The team is highly specialized and consists of only two character classes. Tim – 2x Priests, currently both Holy spec Rob – 3x Hunters, currently both BM spec The reasoning behind the team composition is that the BM pets should easily be able to tank with the hunters contributing the bulk of the groups DPS, while at the same time healing the pets through pet and hunter talents.  The dual priests will float around spamming Holy Nova
Blizzard Account Administration told not to restore hacked characters
In a stunning revelation from a veteran account administrator at Blizzard, WoW.com has learned that account administrators are being told by Blizzard managers not to restore people’s characters and items after their account has been ransacked by gold sellers and keyloggers. Instead, account administrators are being told to give people a “care package” and get them to accept the package in lieu of total account restoration. If the player does not accept this care package, they are then forced to go into a character restoration queue that is consistently several days to weeks long. According to sources familiar with the situation, this “care package policy” has been implemented in order to lighten the work load of those Blizzard employees who perform account restorations. Similar policies have existed at other times account compromises have been high, such as during the transition from Vanilla WoW to The Burning Crusade.
End of Arena Season 7
If you’re like a lot of our level 80 multiboxers, you probably go in and lose your ten games for the week and then absorb your free points and enjoy reduced pvp gear honor costs.  Well, the end of season 7 could just be a couple short weeks away.  Blizzard announced yesterday that season 7 is set to end on January 19th.  As per the usual, we’ll get a new Vault of Archavon boss, a new set of PVP gear  (should be iLevel 277) and the current top gear available for stupid amounts of honor.  I suspect we’ll also get the new set of gear available for frost badges. All in all, this is definitely business as usual for the end of the season.  If you’re saving up for a piece of gear right now, I’d suggest holding on to your honor and just splurging when the new season starts on the next tier of gear up.  Enjoy your PVPing.
World of Warcraft hotfixes for January 5th
Seems like Blizzard is trying to make up for not having any hotfixes this past week.  Some heroic nerfs and some raid nerfs.  Also, some item fixes.  Just a ton of hotfixes today. Enjoy the read Hopefully you guys benefit from the fixes a lot.
Massively.com MMO 2010 Predictions
I’m a pretty big fan of Massively.com’s website and I thought their 2010 MMO prediction list was spot on in some areas. Check out what they have to say in the article below. With 2009 wrapping up today and 2010 lurking creepily around the corner, we’re eager to release our predictions on what the next year may bring to the MMO scene. Even though we try to keep our news relatively neutral, it’s the editorials and opinion pieces that garner the most reaction from the readers. Positive or negative, we appreciate that. So for this last day of 2009, we honor it by giving our own opinions (both positive and negative) about how 2010 looks to us. Follow along after the jump for a few paragraphs from Kyle Horner, Eliot Lefebvre, Seraphina Brennan and me. In addition to our ramblings, we’d love to hear from you as well. So drop us a comment to let us know what you predict for 2010. Eliot Lefebvre 2010 is going to be a worse year for free-to-play than 2009
Tim Reviews Roccat Valo – Super programmable keyboard
A week ago I got my hands on the Roccat Valo keyboard.  This keyboard has more programmable keys than you can shake a stick at.  From a multiboxing standpoint, the more programmable keys, the better.  Having endless programmable keys is akin to having more HD space, or more RAM.  The more programmable keys you have, the more options open up for additional strategies and methods. From the Roccat Website: ILLUMINATED KEYS AND DISPLAY for improved key hit rate and vital in-game information 41 MACRO KEYS for ultra long macros with 500 keystrokes plus timing information stored directly on the keyboard 2MB INTERNAL MEMORY for storing 1 Profile-2-Go with 4 layers each including individual macros
Tim reviews Razer Naga MMOG mouse
A standard mouse has 2, maybe 3 buttons.  A gaming mouse typically has 4-6 buttons.  But what if your mouse had 17 buttons?  Well, the Razer company was so kind as to ship me one of their Razer Naga gaming mice to review.  Yes folks, there is practically an entire keyboard on this mouse!  We are doing a full unboxing and review of their mouse, including all the materials it comes with, to the software setup and configuration and actual use. The specifications of the Naga from the Razer website: 5600dpi Razer Precision 3.5G Laser Sensor 1000Hz Ultrapolling™ / 1ms response time 200 inches per second max tracking speed