The submission window for the BlizzCon 2008 Movie, Original Song, and Motivational Poster contests has now closed. We thank everyone for the wide array of creative entries we’ve seen.
BlizzCon attendees have until September 30th to enter for the /Silly, Dance, and Costume contests, and until October 3rd to submit pictures for the Diorama contest.
We are in the process of reviewing all applications and submissions as we receive them and look forward to seeing more!
The brackets for the StarCraft, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft Arena tournaments at BlizzCon are now live. These brackets show the starting matches and also provide some information about the contestants who will be competing in this year’s BlizzCon tournaments. We will be updating these brackets during BlizzCon, so make sure to check back to see the latest tournament results and replays.
One of the things that continues to surprise me about WoW is the amount of content that few, if any, people will really see. The dragon massacring a group of adventurers under the flight path to Burning Steppes is a great example. This waterfall and house, high above Elwynn Forest, is another one. It was meant to be just decoration on the flight path between Stormwind and Ironforge, but smart hunter Aurelio made it to the top of the waterfall and used Eagle Eye to get some good shots. If only there were some NPCs up there!
Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards.
Yesterday I wanted to impress you all on my first Moviewatch post, so I showed you a very classy, serious movie. Today? Not so much! Instead, today I offer you a good laugh. MTGScreenie brings us his musical and comedy stylings in the form of Stuck in the World of Warcraft. This music video, set to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but with WoW-specific lyrics, is a comic ode to the game he loves. MTGScreenie’s singing isn’t going to win any awards, but I think that makes the song even more endearing and funny, especially when he strains to hit the high notes or runs out of breath because the song outpaces him. The visuals won’t blow you away, but you’ll see lots of amusing reminders of things you love and hate about playing WoW. Seriously, people, who doesn’t love lag and ganking!
The nerf bat swung and we got grazed a little bit. I didn’t cover the last build’s changes because they were somewhat minor, and most of them were reverted in this latest build anyway except for the change to Beacon of Light’s duration to one minute (and all ranks work now). That’s a buff, just in case you were wondering. On the other hand, the rest of the news is not so good.
Seals were nerfed again. The coefficients for Seal of Vengeance / Corruption, Seal of Blood / of the Martyr, and Seal of Command were lowered. I don’t really have much to say about this other than that I’m disappointed but confident that it’s all balanced. I haven’t done as extensive a test of the Beta as I probably should, so if these damage nerfs were based on hard numbers that Blizzard has gathered, then they’re probably right. I have to believe that.
Melee hits no longer refresh Judgements, which means that in order for the debuff to stay on opponents, Paladins will actually have to continuously Judge them. With the change to Crusader Strike some time back removing its Judgement refresh feature, this means Judgements will be every Paladin’s responsibility. This also means Blizzard is forcing Holy or healing Paladins to insert Judgements into their rotation. With Judgements eating up the GCD now, I’m not so keen on the idea.
