Filed under: Machinima, WoW Moviewatch

This next machinima came as a surprise to me. It appeared in my inbox and was so well done that I had to check to make sure that none of it was borrowed from a cinematic. It’s not every day that the first time you see someone’s work, it’s of this quality!

Cilo, of Secretfist on Zul’Jin, created this Sunwell trailer for his guild. While not as long as it could be, it covers a lot of ground. The sweeping scenery is breathtaking, while the gameplay footage is filmed in a way that makes it tolerable. If all gameplay videos were made this way, I’d blog them a lot more often!

[Thanks, Andrew!]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch …

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Click Here to View the Orignal Article

Filed under: Hunter, Wrath of the Lich King

We’ll kick off today with commenter Zayd and a few questions about hunters….

Have any hunters in the beta tried tanking a 5 man run with one of their tenacity pets yet? I’m very curious to know how viable that is.

I approached our hunter in residence, Daniel Howell (you might know him as BigRedKitty), with this question. Here’s what he had to tell us:

I have not run an instance with a pet-tank, mainly because Growl — a Hunter pet’s #1 aggro-generation spell — is a mess. Having used pet-tanks against various elites in Outland, I am fairly confident that a Tenacity-pet will be able to tank a 5-person instance boss, assuming the appropriate heals and aggro management are coordinated by the rest of the party. However, until Growl is fixed, this really cannot be conclusively proven.

For more of your beta questions — and our beta answers — read on! But if you’re the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We’re aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can’t talk about the beta without giving a few things away.

Continue reading Ask a Beta Tester: Hunter-o-rama

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Click Here to View the Orignal Article

Filed under: Items, Fan stuff, WoW Insider Business, Contests, WoW TCG

Our good friends at WoW TCG Loot recently gave away a number of special tabards (apparently Tabard of the Void was the most popular among the choices, and you can also see some of the funny reasons people said they needed to wear a Tabard). And they kindly saved one for us, and so we’re teaming up with them to give away a code for an ingame Tabard of Flame. This tabard was originally released with the “Heroes of Azeroth” TCG set, but we’re giving it away now to one lucky reader.

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post (and if you need something to comment about, you can try coming up a name for the color on this tabard — “Flame Red” is not an option). In fact, we’re making it so that you can comment once every day all the way up until Friday, August 29th at midnight Eastern. That means that, if you show up every day, you could have four chances total to win this tabard.

And we’ve got better news: this contest is open to anyone playing World of Warcraft in the US or EU regions. The code is valid in either region of the game and the Tabard works for all classes and levels, so if you have a character in World of Warcraft (or just know someone who does) on US or EU realms, you can enter. On Friday at midnight, we’ll choose one lucky commenter to recieve the Tabard code, and they’ll have to go the TCG promotional page and redeem it themselves. Please use a legitimate email that you check often to leave your comments, so we can get in touch with you if you win.

Huge thanks to WoW TCG Loot for their help with this contest — if you want to know more about any of the TCG Loot items in the game, go visit them. Good luck!

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Click Here to View the Orignal Article

Filed under: Patches, Polls, Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast topics, Wrath of the Lich King

Wow. That was some big news there, wasn’t it? As excited as we all were for Wrath of the Lich King, I don’t think any of us expected the announcement that a pre-Wrath content patch would be unleashed upon the public in — to quote Eyonix — “the coming weeks”. While this is Blizzard we’re talking about, a few weeks isn’t quite as nebulous as their traditional “soon”. This can also mean that the content patch could be strategically, shrewdly timed to coincide with the launch of another game that also starts with ‘W’.

If that’s the case, then we can expect to see the pre-Wrath patch in about four weeks! That’s nerve-wrackingly close. Anyway, Eyonix ran through a list of stuff that will come with the patch and it’s exciting to see that Inscription will be in it. This means that players won’t be required to purchase Wrath of the Lich King in order to take it up, unlike Jewelcrafting. There are a bunch of other stuff coming in the patch — what’s the thing that excites you most?

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Click Here to View the Orignal Article

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Wrath of the Lich King, Arena

If there was a question about how Blizzard planned to deal with Arena points in Wrath of the Lich King — which seems so palpably close — Wryxian explained their resolution to the problem of carrying over points from Level 70 to 80. The answer? They won’t. Players who hit Level 71 will have all their Arena points reset to 0 and be removed from all Level 70 bracket Arena teams.

New skirmish brackets will open up for those between Levels 71-75 and Levels 79-80. As mentioned before, Level 80 players will be able to participate in rated matches and be eligible for Level 80 Arena rewards that will, thankfully, look distinctively different from PvE gear. This means that players should be spending their Arena points now instead of banking the maximum 5000 points, as it will not carry over past Level 70. In this scheme of progression, Level 70 Arenas will conceivably die an eventual natural death.

What does this mean for the current season? When the pre-Wrath content patch is released, we’re likely to see a shake-up in class representation in Arena play, as more classes become viable. It is also highly likely that the current season will end when Wrath is finally released, and competitive or rated Arena play will be in a state of limbo as Blizzard is likely to allow several weeks for players to reach Level 80 before starting a new Arena season.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Click Here to View the Orignal Article