The Lost Soldiers of Darkness

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  • Around Azeroth: Wild horses couldn't drag me away
    When you move on to the new zones in Cataclysm, will you miss Northrend? Will it be a pleasure to quest there, or, like Outland, will it just be one more roadblock between you and your sixth level 85 alt? Even if you choose to blaze through your 70s, take a moment to stop and watch the scenery. It may surprise you. (Thanks to Kiruvi of <Dogs of War> on Terokkar (US-H) for the screenshot!)

    Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wow.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited.

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    Around Azeroth: Wild horses couldn't drag me away originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Breakfast Topic: Make yourself at home
    This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

    My gryphon soared away from Ironforge as I headed to Loch Modan. Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms lay 200 quests away, and my journey would pick up in Thelsamar. My leather soles hit green earth and I quickly picked up the quests I had previously left behind. Mounting one of my swift sabers, I made a leap off a nearby embankment. I stopped momentarily to consider my next move. Should I use one of my few remaining Elixirs of Water Walking to ride across the lake, or should I shift into Aquatic Form and race under the water?

    While considering my options, I glanced around, and I was surprised to find a small home nestled into the wall of earth behind me. In front of the house stood its owner, fishing trainer Warg Deepwater. His wife, Khara, stood on the porch. They welcomed me into their small but cozy home, complete with a round fireplace, a wooden table and pictures on the wall.

    This house and its occupants got my attention. Here in this world of vicious animals, monsters, dragons, undead, evil kings and heroes lived a normal family, doing what they always did. It struck me as a token of warmth and familiarity nestled into a land of sometimes cataclysmic chaos. I felt welcome, like I could take a seat on those steps and discuss Ironforge politics or family gossip. Maybe we could pour a few mugs of ale and listen to a chorus of crickets while we watched the sun go down over the lake.

    Continue reading Breakfast Topic: Make yourself at home

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    Breakfast Topic: Make yourself at home originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Phat Loot Phriday: Lord Walden's Top Hat
    (SPOILER NOTE FROM THROGG -- THIS ARTICLE MIGHT HAVE HABERDASHERY BASED SPOILERS ABOUT CATACLYSM.)

    "Oh," Lolegolas said, tossing a cascade of blonde ribbons over his shoulder like a wheat fountain. "Throgg, I must say. I must take it all back. That haberdasher you've seen has performed a miracle for you."

    Throgg blinked. "Not Christmas, little belfling. I do not have her Dasher."

    Lolegolas held perfectly still, blinking at the orc with confused eyes. "Have her Dash ... oh! Oh, no! I meant haberdasher. The hatter you must have visited. For the hat you are wearing is quite marvelous!"

    "You really like it? It is Lord Walden's Top Hat. It does nothing for me," Throgg said in slow, careful words. He nudged the front of the hat up slightly, letting his unibrow shine in the sunlight.

    "I must disagree, fair Throgg," Lolegolas said, waving away the comment with his perfectly manicured fingers. "It does wonders for the shape of your skull. It's gone from being quite block-shaped to something more like a rectangle. Your entire face is far more geometrically sound now."

    "No," Throgg said. "I mean, it has no stats on it. It does nothing. But it sure looks nice."

    "Well, then, Throgg," Lolegolas said. "Why are you wearing it?"

    The orc smiled as he slid a monocle onto his nose. "Take up banking."

    Name Lord Walden's Top Hat
    Damage Immense to the hearts and romances of those around you
    How to get it It's a quest item in Cataclysm. You must handle the Betrayal at Tempest's Reach.
    How to get rid of it You sell it to some soulless vendor for 1 copper.

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    Phat Loot Phriday: Lord Walden's Top Hat originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth
    Zach sees everything through the PvP perspective of The Art of War(craft), including homemade cookies baked by his supremely awesome and sexy baker wife. He sees the brownies as opponents that need to be devoured in a methodical, strategic and soul-crushing manner. He advises everyone to look at all things (especially food) as adversaries that must be defeated and guarantees that success in life will follow. Probably.

    Let's face it. Right now, if you're a regular reader of WoW.com, we're in some sort of holding pattern and the biggest thing that interests us about the game is what's going on in the Cataclysm beta. It's still far too early to settle on any talent builds, but who can resist playing with those talent calculators, right? Certainly not me. The beta changes so rapidly, though, that it would be foolish to write anything without the proper caveat that the final product is likely going to be much different.

    One thing that's likely to stay the same throughout beta, however, is the ravaged landscape of Azeroth. This should create some interesting possibilities for world PvP. The biggest change is that the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will become flyable. It will become harder and far more dangerous to level as players must now not only watch their literal backs but also look skyward for potential griefers. On PvP servers, this makes it a far more dangerous and exciting world.

    Continue reading The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth

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    The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way
    The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy.

    Good morning and welcome to this week's column, an overview of how the talent specialization changes affect leveling a warrior in the Cataclysm beta. Before I started this project, I made sure to keep to the following self-imposed rules.
    1. No heirlooms. This is 100 percent quest rewards and random drops. (Yes, the Wyrmslayer Spaulders dropped randomly for me while questing in Felwood.) I didn't run any instances because after level 30 or so it got really hard to find an instance group at the levels I was at, but that wasn't a hard-and-fast rule.
    2. Try and exhaust a zone before moving on. This means doing as many quests as I can, no skipping around, and experiencing as much of the new versions of old zones as possible. Turns out you can actually do fairly well that way. There are a lot of quests out there now.
    3. Switch talent specialization every four or five levels. There was no real rhyme or reason to this, I just wanted to see how talent specs felt at different levels. Blood Craze is very strong now. Combined with Bloodthirst and the heal from Victory Rush, a fury warrior can easily take on groups without falling over dead or running away. The old warrior strategy of "kill them before they kill you" is actually somewhat viable now.
    So let's discuss the experiment. What did I find were the pros and cons of the new system? What's good for warriors and what's bad?

    Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way

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    The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Shifting Perspectives: Balance DoTs in Cataclysm
    Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week, are taking a look at those two abilities that some druid seems to have forgotten. What sad, sad times these are.

    Do you like that screenshot? That would be what happens when you cross a bugged version of Lunar Justice -- I don't even have the talent, I never had the talent -- with a large AoE group that swarms around you. You can hide entire Ancients in that thing; seriously, you can.

    I have something that I must confess to all of you today; I've been a bit remiss in the work that I've done with all of the Cataclysm information that's going around right now. I've spent a lot of time focusing on topics such as Eclipse, mana regeneration and Moonkin Form -- all of which are very important -- yet I have completely failed to take into account the whole picture. How Wrath scales, the way in which Eclipse is influenced by RNG, how useful Moonkin Form may or may not be to a player -- these are all important, but so too is the value of our entire spell arsenal. To that end, I'd like to take you back into the downward spiral that is my life as a beta addict as we take a not so quick gander at how our lovable Moonfire and Insect Swarm are holding up their end of the bargain thus far in the next expansion.

    Before that, let me say that I haven't done any testing of the new instances as of yet, mostly because I'm scared to -- very, very scared to -- so everything I've been doing is limited to questing and work on target dummies. These are nice tools, but they aren't quite the same as seeing how everything works out within a boss setting. Movement and other caveats to every boss encounter can heavily sway the importance of any single ability at the drop of a hat, so I am saddened that I haven't been able to actually get in and try my hand at any real encounter. There's a reason for it, though. Like I said, I'm scared; I'm scared because tank threat is really, really, really, really, really screwed up right now, and I have this thing against seeing my face splat against the ground, eating dirt. I cheat on my balance druid with a protection paladin from time to time, and running anything makes me want to cry at the moment. Until that's fixed ... you probably won't see me running much of anything.

    Anyway, back on point of DoTs -- let's get right into it, shall we?

    Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Balance DoTs in Cataclysm

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    Shifting Perspectives: Balance DoTs in Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Drama Mamas: Too sexy for your group

    NSFW warning: Video may be slightly NSFW (bikinis and shirtless guys).
    Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

    Does Right Said Fred hold the answer to the latest WoW drama? This week, the Drama Mamas help a frustrated player who can't figure out why so many of her groupmates seem to feel they're simply too sexy for their groups.

    To my dearest Drama Mamas,

    In a random heroic I did earlier, I kept getting prompted to kick members of my party. I saw nothing wrong with the way these players were performing, and I always voted against it. After it happened again, I asked my party why there were so many random kick attempts. I was told by a hunter in my party that the tank, who was in a guild with the hunter, was being an ass and that it was funny, after which the tank sent a smiley face in party chat. I did not say anything further and continued healing, only to be kicked a minute later. Oh, did I mention we were in the middle of Falric?

    Was I right to question why there were so many kick attempts? Is there anything I could have done to avoid this situation? It seems like kick abuse is happening more and more frequently. It is not uncommon for me to be in a party where a tank or DPS will start a vote simply because that player won a piece of gear they wanted; I have even been in groups where a member has started a vote to kick a player who is pumping out higher DPS.

    Continue reading Drama Mamas: Too sexy for your group

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    Drama Mamas: Too sexy for your group originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Choose My Adventure: To beta or not to beta
    Choose the adventures of the WoW.com staff as we level our characters in <It came from the Blog> on Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H).

    Are there goblin hunters who didn't name their crab pets Ghostcrawler? It seems to me that it should be the default name. It would save time. First schedule, then polls:
    • Fox Van Allen as Foxlight, the level 22 blood elf paladin: Friday, 8 p.m. EDT
    • Michael Sacco as Sahko, the orc warlock; Christian Belt, as Selfloathius, the level 16 blood elf warlock; Elizabeth Harper as Faience, the level 24 troll shaman; Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, the level 17 troll mage; Michael Gray as Grayfields, the level 17 tauren hunter; and Gregg Reece as Sandwichdoc, the level 16 troll shaman, will be making appearances as they can.
    Some of us will be playing our Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H) characters, but some of us will be letting you choose what we do in the Cataclysm beta. The polls are after the break.

    Continue reading Choose My Adventure: To beta or not to beta

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    Choose My Adventure: To beta or not to beta originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Cataclysm Beta: Throne of the Tides gallery
    Warning: This is a post of a gallery of a Cataclysm dungeon. Spoilers abound.

    Throne of the Tides is one of the new dungeons set to debut in Cataclysm. As you'll see from these images, it's also one of the most visually distinctive, with gorgeous textures, an astonishing color palette, sweeping underwater vistas and a raging battle between the elementals serving Neptulon the Tidehunter and the malevolent naga forces of Queen Azshara. (I just don't get to use the word malevolent enough day to day.)

    If you don't want any spoilers (and also don't want to laugh at pictures of my group running around trying to figure out where the bosses were), then this gallery is not for you.

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    Cataclysm Beta: Throne of the Tides gallery originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • The Maelstrom is probably epic enough for you now
    A week or so ago, someone on the Cataclysm beta forums complained that the Maelstrom's appearance in the upcoming expansion just wasn't epic enough. It's a pretty silly thing to say. Valnoth, aka WoW Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi, apparently agreed and responded with the following:

    Re: The Maelstrom?
    Maybe I missed the memo on levels of "epicosity" or something, but I'm pretty sure the Maelstrom is a CLASS 10 epic zone. Though I guess it is missing sharks with laser beams patrolling the waters and Arthur Fonzarelli jumping across it with water skis. And dinosaurs.


    And then, a bit later, posted:

    Re: The Maelstrom?
    After reading this post I called for a meeting with TOP TOP MEN (that's two tops) in order to figure out a solution to the problem at hand. Frankly, I think we hit a home run. The next 4.0 build (or the one after) should have a Maelstrom that's between 10 - 50x more epic than what currently exists.

    Buckle yourselves into your computer chairs or face being blown away!


    And sure enough, as promised, this latest beta build has turned the "Epic" dial up to 11 where the Maelstrom is concerned. Flying around it is Epicus Maximus <Paragon of Epicosity>, a level 90 elite shark, who is being ridden by an elite rare devilsaur named <And a Dinosaur> riding a rocket and manning (dinosauring?) a laser beam, being ridden by an undead mage playing guitar named <Rock On>.

    That should suffice.

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    The Maelstrom is probably epic enough for you now originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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