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The past week I have been mostly....
1. PVP druid: lvl35 long Qs levelling by herbing and cook/fish/pet battle dailies.
2. Garrisonless shaman: Got another level and Shadowmoon now complete
3. Evlyxx II: been neglected this week /hangs head in shame
4. Evlyxx: 8/10 BRF progress on Maidens. 4pce at last half normal
5. Exhumed: now been made GM but still not promoted coming soon!!
6. Hearthcast AoE appearance
7. IRL: Changes incoming to my life schedule that may force a show change. Still trying to work out details in my head as nothing is confirmed and times are still fluid.
and now the news...
General News
• BlizzCon will be November 5th and 6th 2015
• Tickets $199 USD via Eventbrite at 3 am BST on 16 April and 6 pm BST on 18 April.
• Players now deal 10% less damage against other players while in PvP combat.
Raid News
• MC BRF: 19 guilds now have killed MC Blackhand
• 12 EU guilds, 4 Chinese, 2 Korean, 1 US guild.
• 3 Alliance and 16 Horde
• Blood Legion leaving the World First race for now.
• Blizzard confirmed that you get more legendary drops on alts.
• BUG FIX: Blackhand - Siegemaker's Battering Ram ability is no longer considered to be an AoE attack on all difficulties.
Priest News
• BUG FIX: Cascade will now properly use the casting Priest's Multistrike chance for bounces beyond the first one.
Ranty News
• hotfix next week that will increase the item level of all raid drops from all difficulties of the Blackrock Foundry raid.
Talk Talk
Was all about class balance Mail Time
Syene (@_3ske) said: Divine Insight does make PoM instant although not reflected in the tooltip;
This is How We Do It
This week what I looked at the tier 6 or level 90 talents.
In next week's Talk Talk I'll be looking at the standard Blizzard UI and why I don't use it. I'd love to hear if you use the standard UI and your reasons for why you do or don't use it.
Please contact
the show by email to: podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
or alternatively via Twitter
to the show: @EvangelysmCast
or to me: @Evlyxxmore »
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The past week I have been mostly....
Not levelling my druid Ursula on Aszune by PVP but by herbing and cook/fish/pet battle dailies;
Not logging onto my garrisonless shaman;
Getting Evlyxx to 7/10 in HC BRF and progress on Maidens;
Playing shadow in RBGs on Evlyxx;
Neglecting Evlyxx II beside Garrison missions;
Becoiming the new GM of Exhumed;
Being eliminated from the Wow podcaster Tournament of Epicness because I failed the cut;
Appearing on Girls Gone WoW - show 171;
I'm now getting comfortable with doing this show and am now looking to upgrade my equipment;
Preparing to man up and start begging the accountant (aka wife) for some fundsfor the above;
General News
WoW Token;
6.1.2 now on PTR;
BUG FIX: Dark Heart of Pandaria (Scenario) bug fixed;
Raid News
Mythic Race: Grats to Midwinter for world 3rd / Alliance-US 1st.
3 tanks?BUG FIX: fall damage on Blackhand
Priest News
BUG FIX: Archangel should no longer incorrectly increase Flash Heal's mana cost.
BUG FIX: Vampiric Embrace should no longer incorrectly factor in damage caused by Searing Insanity.
Talk Talk
Was all about instance difficulty and what would make it better
Mail Time
email from Dan (@TheSteakhaus) about class balance;
Jon (@jvirangaming) asked: What comes after talents and complained about my levels;
This is How We Do It
This week what I looked at the tier 5 or level 75 talents.
Next week my Talk Talk section will be focusing on class balance in Warlords of Draenor and I'd love to hear your views and personal experiences on this so please contact the show by
email to
podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
or alternatively via Twitter
to the show: @EvangelysmCast
or to me: @Evlyxxmore »
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The past week I have been mostly....
I've started 2 whacky WoW projects this week the 1st is levelling my shaman through Draenor without a garrison, so far it has been quite difficult as there are not many quests once you hit the point where the next step is to build the garrison. Getting around is also difficult as I have no quick way to get to Shadowmoon Valley from Ashran which is where I decided to set my hearthstone. The 2nd is levelling a new druid but only via PVP. Very early days on this one.
In my raiding I missed a guild first kill of Kromog because I was working but was able to be there as Exhumed went 7/10 HC with an Oregorger kill.
• Realm connections are complete, for the moment at least.
• Some dungeons have had shortcuts blocked off in undocumented changes in patch 6.1 and this may lead to the resetting of some Challenge Mode dungeon leaderboard times.
• Players are now able to whisper or send party invites to players on any realm.
Raid News
• Paragon have joined Method in being 10/10 in Mythic Blackrock Foundry, the US 1st and Alliance firsts are still up for grabs with MidWinter in pole position to claim both with Blood Legion and ScrubBusters close behind them.
• Drak'Tharon Keep: Fixed an issue where Novos the Summoner was unkillable on Heroic difficulty.
• Culling of Stratholme: Fixed an issue where the Dark Runed Chest after defeating Mal'Ganis could not be looted on Heroic difficulty.
Priest News
• Saving Grace (Disc, Holy) now heals for 34% less in PvP combat and now correctly reduce absorbs done (absorption taken).
• PvP 2-piece set bonus effect for Shadow Priests is now removed at the beginning of a boss encounter. The set bonus will still work during the encounter.
• The Glyph of Purification is no longer bind on pickup
Talk Talk
What is Ashran
The ultimate objective of this battleground is for each faction is to kill the opposing faction's leader. When the Battleground is won by either side, there is a 5 minute pause; after which, the Battleground simply restarts fresh at the Crossroads.
Before you can defeat the enemy faction's leader, you must win several "battles" along the Road to Glory (NOT the side events)
In every Ashran instance, the population of both factions is tightly controlled to maintain equal numbers.
Ashran Design Goals
Blizzard's primary goal with Ashran was to create a zone where two factions were competing against each other throughout the zone. Players entering Ashran have two motivations: earn 200 conquest to fulfill the Ashran bonus portion of their conquest cap, and kill the faction boss for their daily chance at loot from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox.
The problem pre-6.1
There was the ability for both sides to get the same reward at two different places at the same time as players could earn that conquest by either killing the faction boss or by doing events, and there was this unofficial player defined rule that Alliance did one and the Horde did the other, which faction did what was generally dependent on the server cluster you were on.
Ashran simply was devoid of real PvP and both sides earned their reward.
Blizzard's Fix
Blizz removed conquest from the bosses knowing full well this meant the Alliance and Horde would be forced to compete against each other in events for conquest. They also "knew" that facing new opposition at events, the Horde would once again engage in the central road. Quite how they "knew" this fact is beyond me as there is no reward for killing the opposing factions boss.
Blizz acknowledged that killing a faction boss only to receive the 600 ilvl Aspirant gear wasn’t motivating so they removed that from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox so it will always award either Combatant (ilevel 620) or Gladiator (ilevel 660) gear. But the drop rate is pathetically small for a once a day shot.
The Problem post-6.1
In sort there is no PVP in Ashran, the epic tug of war along the Road to Glory just simply doesn't happen often enough because after the first kill where every got rewarded with their Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox and failed to get their epic players move to the events as here lies their Conquest points and when new people join the "battle" nobody goes to help these guys get their Strongbox, which means everyone is now sat at the the events.
But, I hear you cry, surely that means there is PVP there? Well Blizz claim there is increased competition between the two factions in both events and the main road. But maybe my luck is bad or my timing is off because I'm not seeing that at all.
What I'm seeing is queue times have droped, no main raid group killing the faction bosses and the Alliance camping the quarry and burial grounds while the Horde are camping the Stadium and the Ogre event. As an Alliance player if we move to the Horde event areas, we get butchered because of the tunneling effect of each arena and if the Horde try to come to Alliance events the same happens to them.
My biggest issue is that the whole purpose of Ashran has been removed, killing the faction bosses because the events are where the guaranteed rewards are.
I cannot understand why the events are not simply a way of boosting your factions chance of success in killing the faction bosses. For example when the faction bosses are reset each event generates some bonus and only once all 4 events have occurred are the faction bosses spawned. Once spawned the side events stop until one faction boss is defeated and the winner of that battle gets Conquest and a Gleaming Ashran Stronbox and then after 5 minutes the events start again.
This would encourage both factions to do everything in Ashran, because each thing happens once per battle and the faction that wins most events has the better chance of killing the opposing faction boss, sure this sounds like Alterac Valley but wasn't the overall goal of Ashran to reproduce the epic AV battles of vanilla?
Mail Time
So this week I've got my first real e-mail, makes me feel a little bit humble as previously it has come from people I knew before the show started.
Bruce (@btarro2) asked 3 questions:
1. What drew you to the priest class above all others?
I was told by the friend that got me interested in WoW, that a healer was the best thing to play as you always found a group easy and that priests were the best healers. In D&D I'd also played mainly clerics and this was the nearest thing to that in WoW so I stuck went with it and have never looked back.
2. Do you have any plans on complementing the priest information in the podcast with youtube content as well?
In a perfect world, I'd love to do this, but real world commitments and wanting to play wow means the time isn't there to do it regularly. Also, having a slow (2meg) connection means that streaming is impossible so until British Telecom put the infrastructure in to give me fibre speeds that is merely a dream. But when that happens I may start streaming as I can play and do the videos live which removes the need for editing which in itself is time consuming.
3. Maybe some recorded raid/pvp footage as an overlay to your podcast you publish on youtube.
This is something I hadn't considered but I may try that for this show and see how long the upload takes as this is something I can do while I sleep and/or while I'm at work.
This is How We Do It
This week what we're looking at the tier 4 or level 60 talents. Like the tier 1 & 2 talents, the choices are the same regardless of role and spec.
Void Tendrils also are much safer to use in PvE than Psychic Scream, an AoE fear that causes upto 5 enemies with 8 yards to run away for 8 seconds. There are times when fear is safe to use though so it can be useful. However, it is exceptional in PvP and depending on the group your in can be much better than the third option, Mind Control.
Mind Control is now known as Dominate Mind and it allows a priest to control an enemy for upto 30 seconds as long as that enemy isn't mechanical. MC has uses in PvE and has been needed on certain fights Razuvious in Naxxramas was the biggest one where all a priest would do on the fight was MC adds that would off-tank the boss. However, the most common use for MC is in PvP and is exceptionally good at removing enemies off of cliffs, like the lumber mill in Arathi Basin and the central flag area in Eye of the Storm. I also had great fun throwing adds off the edge in Vortex Pinnacle during early Cataclysm but eventually this got hot fixed as I discovered when the 4 adds that I had MCd off the edge came running into the fight on the last boss. Which caused a lot of laughs on TS with my guildmates. Thankfully it wasn't pug.
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The past week I have been mostly....
1. Removing the egg from my face, last week I predicted that 6.1 would hit last week. I was wrong but only by a week! So The US already has 6.1 and here in the EU we get it today so I hope you're all enjoying Tweeting from in game and posting your SELFIES!
2. Mount farming, yes still But not while I have been queuing for Ashran, I've given up trying that until next week! My route takes in Dragon Soul for the Blazing Drake and Experiment 12-B, Onyxia, ICC25 for Invincible, Zul'Gurub for the Panther and Raptor mounts, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle for the drakes, Sethekk Halls for Anzu (yes I know you got it in TBC), Firelands for Smoldering Egg of Millagazor and Pureblood Firehawk and Throne of the Four Winds for the Drake of the South Wind. But next week I won't need to go to the Throne of the Four Winds as my hunter, Vonuberwald managed to get the Drake of the South Wind, on his first visit but I had been many times before!
3. Evlyxx has been raiding of course and this week we got Flamebender Ka'graz down on HC and on our weekend normal BRF run we did the achievement on Ka'graz of not killing Aknor Steelbringer which means he is now one of my Garrison followers.
4. I actually did some PVP this week too with loads of 3s with a hunter, Alkathraze and Funjitsu a brewmaster monk we had a lot of laughs and a reasonably fast Conquest cap. I also had a run out with the RBG team last night and while we won most of our battles we still have a lot of improvements to make but considering we started late this year due to a visit by the drama lama our RBG team is looking very promising and the leadership trio of Dumix, Appljack and Dyloxe are doing a fine job.
5. IRL stuff has been really boring and the reason the show is late out this week is because my shifts this week suck as it is Monday/Tuesday days and Wednesday/Thursday nights so I miss out on raiding and deliver the show late to you guys and gals. Sadly this will happen 2 or 3 weeks in a row every 2 months but hopefully I'll find a job with a better work schedule soon and then I can have a defined 7 day week and have a regular day of getting the show out to you all. Anyway that's a different story for a different day.
In the news this week:
Blackhand has been defeated by Method and at the time of recording only Method. So congratulations to them on a true World 1st as the US guilds have now entered their 3rd week mythic raiding. There has been some drama around this as there have been accusations of cheating by account sharing and I'll cover that in a bit more depth in this week's Talk Talk which is all about Exploiting WoW inspired by this very topic.
6.1 has hit the servers, Twitter has remained stable which means most of the naysayers and doom prophets got it wrong, or I follow the right people! Talk Talk...WoW Exploits.
So last week Method killed mythic Blackhand and the accusations of cheating started almost before Blackhand hit the ground and took his last breath. The crime that Method stand accused of is account sharing. Now cast your mind back to Christmas time, not to the turkey and your presents but to a pair of guys named Reckful and Sodah who were banned for account sharing while streaming and openly admitting they were playing each other's accounts, stupid boys that they were.
The method of Method's alleged account sharing is slightly different though, the accusers claim that certain players created a 2nd account and then transferred their geared alt to it to allow a 2nd person to play the geared alt instead of playing their own lesser geared character. Now this is harder to prove as the alleged incident wasn't streamed and unless the 2 players were playing at different locations and not masking their IP addresses to be the same, it is perfectly acceptable to have 2 Warcraft licences online from the same Battlenet account at the same time. So really unless the Method guys are dumbasses their guilt cannot be proven.
But this type of cheating, and let's be honest if the accusations are true it is cheating, is far from new.
Back in Vanilla anyone who wanted to become Grand Marshall or High Warlord account shared. Each servers PVP community at the time decided on the weekly winner of the title and that guy (or gal) was guaranteed the title because they would be played 24 hours a day for the 7 days and the only way that is possible is to account share.
Also in Vanilla there were raid exploits, Razorgore the first boss in Blackwing Lair could exploited by Alliance guilds by casting Divine Intervention on him in the first phase which reset the fight and when Divine Intervention wore off the fight restarted in phase 2! In Ahn'Qiraj 40, one guild discovered that you could amend the game files and fall through the floor after the first boss and end up at the last boss!
There have also been other "exploits" that have been widely used as a valid tactic because guilds cheesed mechanics by clever positioning of bosses and/or players fights like Bloodlord Mandokir in the original Zul'Gurub could be cheesed by the whole raid, except the tanks, hiding behind spears or standing on a ledge that the raptor pet he had couldn't charge a random victim. Prince Malchezzar in Karazhan could be made considerably easier by the ranged and healers standing in the doorway when fighting the boss as the infernals couldn't land there, while never confirmed a fix was implemented in 2.4.
Also in TBC was the rumoured cheating on the world first Lady Vashj kill. The exploit was to purposely wipe at 20 percent and have a paladin use Divine Intervention, Vashj will reset to Phase 2 and as her HP is connected to the pillars, the HP will disappear when they despawn leaving her at 1 HP, a priest uses a soulstone and then uses Shadow Word: Death to kill her.
In Wrath, the world first kills of Yogg Saron and the Lich King were overturned because of guilds cheating. The first by making killer adds evade and the latter by making the platform rebuild itself by throwing engineering bombs.
Back in Dragon Soul the world first guilds, including Paragon and Method, found a way to exploit the loot by trading loot to characters that had already had their once a week chance of loot.
All this shows is that the world first guilds will stop at nothing to get their world first kills and really if that means so much to these folk let them cheat their way to the top. It matters not to me nor to most WoW players who killed a boss first and the only way these guys get remembered is to have some controversy linked to the kill. Personally I kill raid bosses for the achievement not the public worshipping me, as if that is liable to happen!
Anyway grats to Method on their kill, cheats or not they earned the respect of us all however brief that glory moment will be.
Mail Time
I'd like to thank Rho of Realm Maintenance and Extended Maintenance for plugging this show on his show and also to Alt of Alternative Chat and Extended Maintenance for the retweets /bow to you both.
As good as it is to get feedback from guildies I'd still love to hear from my less biased listeners so if please email me at podcast@evlyxx.co.uk or via either of my Twitter accounts.
The show account is: @EvangelysmCast
My personal twitter account is: @evlyxx
And I'll wrap up today's show with my tip section...
This is How We Do It
This week what we're going to look at is the tier 3 or level 45 talents. For the first time the talents now vary between specs here, but only between healer and DPS specs.
As I'll spend more time on the healer stuff I'll look briefly at the 2 that are different for our shadowy friends.
The first is Surge of Darkness and in short this turns Mind Spike into an instant cast spell that deals 50% more damage and does not remove DoTs as it normally would. This is great for fights with high movement and as you can save your procs for when you're on the move.
The third choice is Insanity, which transforms Mind Flay into a more powerful spell, 100% more powerful, for 6 seconds after consuming a Shadow Orb. This one is great for fights were you can turret for long periods.
For us healers, this tier of talents is all about mana savings. The first option is Surge of Light, each heal and smite you cast has a chance to cause the next Flash Heal to be instance and consume no mana. Personally I think this one is great for holy priests and also for discipline priests in RBGs where healers are the primary target. But in PVE this talent is very lack lustre.
The second choice is Mindbender, now the observant ones of tyou may have noticed I went from first to third in my Shadow section, the reason for that is that the Mindbender is the same for all three specs. This simply reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend, note he is not a Shadowfriend, and over 15 seconds will deal a crap ton of damage. Since 5.0, I've been saying that the damage output of Shadowfiend's needs nerfing not by a lot but the mana return needs to stay the same. However, 6.1 sees our little shadowy friend gets a 33% BUFF as it will last 5 seconds more.
And last, and by no means least, is Power Word: Solace which converts your Holy Fire into Power Word: Solace which increases its damage and returns 2% mana when cast which we can do every 10 seconds. This became my default choice last week because I worked out why top end priests were using Solace over Mindbender, but the 33% buff to Mindbender in 6.1 makes that my default choice once more, because mana > DPS output right now.
Before I cover what the show is all about this week I'd just like to share my current set of Weak Auras for all 3 priest specs as I have just updated my Shadow ones:
On Evlyxx I have been mainly farming mounts (fruitlessly as it turns out) while waiting for my Ashran queue to pop. Which has consumed a lot of time for very little reward and I'm hoping the fixes coming soon will stop that.
Killing 2 new heroic bosses also on Evlyxx, in Blackrock Foundry, Hans'gar and Franzok which was possibly the funniest fight to listen to ever and Operator Thogar, he with the trainset and man what a fight that is and I am asheamed to admit I failed horribly at dodging trains on more than one occasion and here is a free tip to all of you, if you have to move off of a track don't dither, don't change your mind because you'll end up dead and that applies to any fight not just Thogar!
I also cleared 9/10 Blackrock on our casual guild raid this weekend and failed to get any gear from there and
Evlyxx II also got some raid action this week in my second outing with the lovely folks of Cotton Candy and we managed to kill HC Kargath and got close on Twins and Tectus.
I'm also considering renaming Evlyxx II because, it is really confusing having 2 toons on the same connected realm with the same name especially when I'm trying to talk through this section.
I've also spent a good portion of time learning some more tricks in Audacity and hopefully over the coming weeks you'll hear the difference in the show as I get better with the software and techniques of audio production.
Raid News
At the time of recording Mythic Blackhand still remains the undefeated champion of Black Rock Foundry and only Paragon and Method look like real challengers this week as both are 9/10 Mythic. There are many guilds at 8/10 and all are stuck on Blast Furnace. And having done that fight only on normal and found it both challenging and dull god only knows how these guys are feeling about it as their bashing their heads against the wall
I also found it rather comical that many US guilds were proudly announcing "world firsts" on Mythic bosses last Tuesday despite their 24 hour head start on the EU guys and yes technically they were correct but seriously its almost as bad as the Super Bowl winners declaring themselves as World Champions
This week also saw Blizzard announce major graphical overhauls to the engine running Warcraft that are coming in 6.1 and these are of course already live on the PTR. The changes sound great and are evidence that Blizzard are trying to make the game prettier than ever and of course future proofing it. Hopefully wont screw over those players with lesser systems as they are optional upgrades.
Talk Talk
This week, I decided, wrongly as it turns out that the patch would drop in the EU on Wednesday18th February (it is actually coming Wednesday 25th February) and rather than go through EVERYTHING, I just covered what interests me most with a heavy focus on priests and raiding but I will go through in the order that I found the patch notes on the official site, but I will cover the priest changes at the end.
Rather than post everything I covered just take a peek at the official 6.1 patch site here.
Mail Time
I'm still getting no mail and this week I failed to even get any questions / feedback via Twitter or the guild /cry.
However, I have nominated myself for Sheep Moon's 2015 Podcaster Tournament of Epicness and I'd like to ask you all that you go and nominate me and any other podcasters that you listen to. You have until Feb 24th which really isn't far away so go and do it now by visiting the Sheep Moon site here.
So I really really really want to hear from you guys and gals so please email me at:
If you'd like to get in touch with me the email address is: podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
The show twitter account is: @EvangelysmCast
My personal twitter account is: @evlyxx
As usual, I ended the show with my tips section...
This is How We Do It
This week what I looked at was the tier 2 or level 30 talents. As we had in the first tier talents all priest specs have the same three talent options.
This tier of talents is all about movement, the first option is Body and Soul which increases the movement speed of the target of your Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith Icon Leap of Faith by 60% for 4 seconds.
The second choice is Angelic Feather allows you to place up to 3 feathers on the ground. Moving over a feather increases the player's movement speed by 60% for 6 seconds. This ability has a maximum of 3 charges, and a 10-second recharge time.
And finally we have Phantasm causes your Fade to remove all movement-impairing effects from you. It also makes you unslowable for 5 seconds.
My favorite is and always has Body and Soul because it allows full control over who gets your speed buffs it is also passive as being Disc you're already putting bubbles on your raid members. This does cause problems though as if someone needs a speed buff and you shielded them a few seconds before you Weakened Soul prevents you from assisting them It also means they may be unable to get a shield when they need the damage mitigation because you gave them a speed buff a few seconds earlier.
Angelic Feather gives a longer speed buff but you lose the control as the person you want to speed up must actively running through the feathers left behind which can be consumed by other players.
Phantasm is more of a PvP talent, and can especially when combined with Spectral Guise, the priest invisibility tier 1 talent we discussed last week. But in PVE it is pretty much useless.
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In the past week I have been mostly....
1. working IRL and promoting the podcast
2. Gearing up Evlyxx II and doing some more relaxed raiding in Highmaul with the wonderful folks of Cotton Candy
3. Raiding Blackrock Foundry with the wonderful people of Exhumed, on Shadowsong EU but only 1 day cos of server issues.
4. Doing a lot of preparation for raid leading in Blackrock Foundry
News
In this section I reviewed:
• WoW Stable at 10+ Million Subscribers;
• Blackrock Foundry goes Mythic (no LFR);
• In 6.1, Saving Grace one of the priests level 100 talents is being buffed by 50% and becoming an instant cast (currently 1.5 seconds). As this would be insanely strong in PVP it is then beig nerfed by 33% in PvP.
Talk Talk
My topic of the week was Twitter integration because in patch 6.1 Blizzard are giving us the ability to link a Twitter account to our WoW account and send "tweets" from inside the game, including attaching a screenshot.
Now WoW isn't breaking new ground with Twitter integration, far from it, Rift had this when it launched back in 2011 and I personally liked this feature in Rift for the short time I played it.
The UI is unobtrusive and if you don't use Twitter you'll not be affected in anyway. If you are a Twitter user you probably Tweet about the game already and this feature is simply saving you the effort of grabbing your phone or alt-tabbing out to do that especially when it comes to attaching screenshots.
Of course there are concerns, and there are the "slippery slope" arguments like:
omg my twitter account will start spamming my followers with every single achievement - I'm sure there will be the ability to choose what you tweet, if there isn't simply unlink your Twitter account and tweet as you do now.
I don't want to see everyone else's tweet spam. Well 2 things for this one why are you following someone if you don't wanty to see their Tweets? If someone is Tweet spamming your feed simply un-follow them or let them know their spam is annoying, they may not realise it. Heck I know this one from personal experience, I played with adding a RSS feed from the armoury to my Twitter account and it spammed my followers with every epic I looted, every raid boss I killed and every achievement I obtained and that included stuff on alts, from all expansions and as someone that ran many fun runs with my guildmates through ICC, Ulduar and the like on a Saturday that was a lot of tweets and I got a lot of complaints all justified. I soon broke that link.
we'll soon see Blizzard offering promotions to "Tweet about #Warlords to win a free battlepet" or "Tweet your favorite character for 100 free garrison resources!" Even if it does happen it won't be game breaking and only viewed as compulsory by haters.
others are concerned that when we kill bosses and it will pop up "Want to share this with your friends?". I'm 99.99% certain it won't and even if it does if it annoys you that much again unlinking your Twitter account will disable the feature.
there are also concerns over the api allowing addons to seize control of your Twitter account, if that happens don't use the addon or once again, and I hate to say it again, simply don't link your Twitter account.
So for my money, its all good and there are simple steps to stop it being annoying. What are your views?
If you'd like to get in touch with me the email address is:
podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
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In this show I looked briefly at the big news of the week which was:
Blackrock Foundry opens with Normal and Heroic difficulties available.
World boss Rukhmar becomes available in Spires of Arak.
In the Talk Talk section of the the current secondary stats and how viable they actually were.
At the beginning of Warlords the secondary stats changed. In Mists we had Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, Hit, Expertise, Dodge, Parry.
Critical Strike: Increases your chance to get bonus damage/heals
Haste: Increases the speed of your attacks/heals
Mastery: Increases a spec specific bonus to your abilities
Spirit: Increase mana regen for healers and hit for damage dealers
Hit: Increases your chance to successfully land an attack on your target = GONE!
Expertise: Decreases the chance of your target to dodge your attack = GONE!
Dodge: Increase your chance to avoid all attacks regardless of direction = GONE!
Parry: Increases your chance to avoid attacks from the front = GONE!
Crit, mastery and haste are great stats as is spirit for us healers, but even to me, there seemed to be duplicity there as hit and expertise always felt like they did the same thing and for casters in Mists that was the case.
Dodge and parry are very different in the real world, but in game they were only tank stats and therefore achieved the same thing, unless the tank decided to not be facing off with the target.
One of Blizzard's reasons for removal of these stats is that they were unexciting, which let's be honest, they were.
So it made sense when they announced the removal of those stats. But rather than remove the stats they were replaced. The stats that were added were:
Bonus Armor: Increases armor & is stronger than other stats for tanks.
Versatility: Increases damage and healing, and reduces damage taken
Multistrike: A chance for your damage/healing abilities to repeat at 30%
Now is it me or does there seem to be duplicity once more, with the exception of Bonus Armour? Which seems to be a great stat and therefore is just fine by me.
Versatility introduces a new concept, reduction of incoming damage as well as boosting our damage/healing output. But couldn't this have been rolled into armour by making armour reduce spell damage as well as physical? Would that have broken PvP by making casters ineffective? Maybe but just have armour work differently in PvP by NOT reducing armour, it's how it works anyway, so no harm no foul. While in principle it is not a bad stat it is just plain old dull, less interesting than hit and expertise. So dull I can't think of a reason to carry on talking about it.
My real biggest pet hate is Multistrike. It sounds great, we all love free attacks right? While for some classes this is a mathematically wonderful stats it is simply a bad stat, it is lazy and also seems to be counter to another design philosophy to counter lag in encounters. Remember when Blizzard told us they had identified smart heals as the cause of lag in encounters and that they want to eliminate the cause by reducing the amount of healing activity in the combat log? Well doesn't multi-strike just repeat that mistake? Are we likely to see a repeat of the lag as our multistrike chances rise? I think we may. Also isn't this pretty much the same as Critical Strike but instead of doing 100% extra damage it does 30% extra damage. That makes it Critical Strike Lite to me and is that exciting?
So what is the answer?
For me Bonus Armour stays, it works perfectly as a tank stat even if there is a question mark on it increasing their damage output.
Versatility is a dull stat, make it Amplification, which was a planned stat, if there is felt to be a need for more than crit/haste/mastery for damage dealers.
Multistrike isn't a dull stat but is really very flawed therefore remove it completely and increase the amount of crit on items by 30% to counter its loss in the game.
If you'd like to get in touch with me the email address is:
podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
IRVINE, Calif.—November 19, 2014—On November 13, millions of Azeroth’s champions enlisted for the war against the Iron Horde with the launch of World of Warcraft®: Warlords of Draenor™, the fifth expansion to the world’s #1 subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game.*
Blizzard Entertainment today announced that as of the first 24 hours of
the expansion’s availability, more than 3.3 million copies had
sold-through† and the game’s global subscriber base had passed 10 million, with growth across all major regions.
Sounds good. When you look at it graphically (thanks to MMO-Champion for the graph) it looks great too.
When I heard this almost 3 weeks ago I was happy, the game I love is once again thriving. Launch day saw sales of the expansion pack hit 3.3 million, back in August it had sold 1.5million copies so between August and November 13th it sold a further 1.8 million copies and during that same period subscriptions rose 2.6 million. Assuming that ALL 1.8million sales were returners (unlikely) we're looking at 800,000 new subscribers that haven't ordered the expansion along with 5.9 million subscribers.
Maybe it's just me assuming that more people bought expansions on the day.
One worrying thing is that, the servers came to a complete standstill across the US and EU realms with 3.3 million players trying to use them at once. According to WoWProgress, there are 120 US realms (counting connected realms as one realm) and 123 EU realms, this means that each realm averaged 13,580 subscribers that bought the expansion on or before launch day and the servers couldn't cope with the demand.
I wonder if this means that some connected realms could now be at risk of being over populated? What would happen? Especially if one half of the connected realm get over populated? This could have a crippling effect on guilds, especially on guilds that have the majority of their members from the sister realm rather than the realm the guild was formed on.
So BlizzCon 2014 has come and Day 1 gave us some big surprises. The biggest was the lack of Warcraft news.
With all the hype over the past week about the trademarking of the Eye of Azshara, everyman and his dog wasguessing that this was either Warcraft 4, the next World of Warcraft expansion or an outside shot as the new Hearthstone expansion. Which at least two of the three are now definitely out of the running as the new Hearthstone expansion was announced as Goblins vs Gnomes, and this is hitting the streets, albeit virtual ones, in the next month and will feature on cards of a mechanical nature.
It is also very unlikely to be be Warcraft 4, as Blizzard decided that their next big title was a new IP. Yes despite officially abandoning project Titan, the FPS MMO, Blizzard have decided that the next big thing they're giving us is to be an FPS, but NOT an MMO, and a certain Jeff Caplan was the man at the helm of the team, sounds like the restart of Titan changed the direction from including an MMO element to the game, which will be called Overwatch. It looks awesome and I'll certainly give a go but my past experiences of FPS style games makes me believe that I'll both suck at it and hate it unless I can play in 3rd person mode because my brain can't cope with the loss of peripheral vision.
The thing I particulrly like are the graphics which are typically Blizzard cartoon style rather than realistic but there is now a much more polished feel than even the new WoW models. If only they could get this style into WoW...
This leaves Eye of Azshara as really only a WoW title now, and if that ends up being the case that is fine, I'm just glad the announcement hasn't happened at BlizzCon because, quite frankly, knowing the next expansion content (WoW 7.0) just a few days before we get the Warlords of Draenor (WoW 6.0) would feel very wrong and detract a lot of focus from the new shiny content before it was even live.
The fear this creates in me is knowing that we're likely to only get two raid tiers in Warlords and that the chances are we won't get sight of the WoW 7.0 beta until after next BlizzCon which means one of two things:
We're getting two very long tiers of raiding over 18-24 months;
We're getting a third tier of raiding which could mean a Trial of the Crusader/Helion raid;
Of course there is a third option of us getting an announcement 'soon™' of the expansion and beta is going to happen around spring 2015 (which coincides with Overwatch beta) and the launch will be Winter 2015/2016. But if that is so, what of BlizzCon 2015?
Evolution of a brand happens and when Blizzard announced that the character models were to be revamped there was much excitement and much nervousness. But at BlizzCon 2013, Blizzard knocked our socks off with the new character models and I was one of the millions of players that rejoiced at the way the new models where so close to the original, but better! So far, I have not heard a single dissenting voice about the models, sure people whined that the NElf had no fangs, but she did, and ofc the female Draenei April Fool caused a ripple but no one seems to have moaned about their toon being ruined.
But today for the first time I've been having some doubts because the female human model looks kind of odd. To show you what I mean I put Evlyxx to the test on the beta realms by using the diable new character model feature so I knew it was a direct replacement rather than me getting something wrong elsewhere.
Undressed the human female form looks very unchanged:
This is great and adding some armour shows some subtle changes in posture, notice the neck and shoulder area and the way the robes hang differently near the feet:
I'm sure you'll agree it all looks rather good and nothing much to complain about.
Maybe I'm being petty, maybe there are some tweeks left to come from Blizzard but right now I'm a very unhappy bunny about potentially having to use the old character models when using Evlyxx, especially after being a fan of the new models for so long, maybe I'll warm to the new look, who knows. Have you checked your toon out to see how it changes when using the new model? If so I'd love to hear your thoughts.
A recent forum post that made me giggle asked a really stupid question. I decided to answer that question and thought I'd share that with you all.
Trolls - look deformed with the curved spines;
Orcs - look deformed with the curved spines;
Taurens - scratch their backsides, helms look ridiculous and appear to move too slowly;
Undead - armour looks awful as half of it is missing;
Blood Elves - males look effimate and females look like they would snap in battle;
Night Elves - males look like they are crapping themselves when they /walk, females bounce when standing still;
Gnomes - annoying high pitched voice, get line of sight issues and get lost in crowds;
Worgen - female models are awful and the males sniff all the time;
Draenei - they have tails, squid like tentacles and legs would break under the weight of the upper body;
Dwarves - females have blow up doll faces and males can't be clean shaven;
Humans - look like humans!
That is ofc just my view and people may disagree, that is your prerogative. That said, I do play all races with one exception, worgen as I really do think that the female model is awful as are their animations. The male sniffing was too much for me to cope with when I rolled a male hunter so much that I ended up race changing to, yes you guessed it, a female human.
With the connection of Aszune and Shadowsong announced as being July 2nd, I decided to check out the web for a list of common issues post connection, so I could be prepared for the worst, should it happen. What I found was reassuringly few problems but the ones I did find were fairly major ones.
PROBLEM: ALL characters vanished during the connection process. Blizzard is did restore the toons and did make this their no1 priority but still there can be delays. SOLUTION: Open ONE ticket to request ALL your characters be restored and list ALL character names, guild names and specify the server name.
PROBLEM: Players who have deleted characters and created new ones to replace them have seen the deleted character(s) reappear and the new one(s) disappear after the realm connection. SOLUTION: Deleting the "deleted" character, switching to a different realm and then back to home realm will update the character list to restore the "missing" character. If that fails, log out of battle.net then back in and if you're still missing a character, open ONE ticket to request the missing characters be restored and list ALL character names, guild names and specify the server name.
PROBLEM: Guilds have disappeared. SOLUTION: If you're not an officer, don't panic let your officers do that! If you're an officer, still don't panic raise ONE ticket explaining the problem and let your other officers know you've done it. No point slowing the Blizzard folk down with duplicate tickets..
PROBLEM: All mail went missing. Blizzard will try to restore the missing mail but they can't guarantee they will restore everything and they won't accept your word for what went missing! SOLUTION: Make sure to empty out the mailbox for ALL your toons and avoid sending mail unless absolutely necessary.
PROBLEM: Auction Houses have lost all auctions. Blizzard restored the deleted auction items to the players who had posted them but it can take days and that's several days you won't able to sell those items and earn gold. SOLUTION: Don't post auctions that will end after 2am Wednesday morning. To be 100% safe, don't post any auctions AFTER 2am Monday morning.
PROBLEM: Raid lockouts are lost. That means any old raid saves may be lost. Also if the connection gets postponed to Thursday, we may be at the start again on Thursday. SOLUTION: We will get 2 lockouts, progress will be hindered BUT we get 2 shots at loot.
PROBLEM: If you have the Valor of the Ancients buff you'll lose the buff during connection. Unfortunately, the system still retains a memory of the VP already earned by character for the week. SOLUTION: You'll need to cap on a different toon. However, this will only be a problem IF you cap between the weekly reset and for the server shutdown prior to the connection. As our connection is Wednesday morning, don't cap until after the connection. You could also get close to cap so you'll only need a quick HC or a few daily quest hand-ins to cap.
Hopefully, as we're far from the first realms to be connected, whatever was causing some of the issues above has been fixed. But it is still good to be prepared and if something major goes wrong don't panic, it will most likely not only be you and simply raise a ticket and give Blizzard as much info as you possibly can and be patient.
Just a quick post on my latest kill, Heroic Malkorok. Horrible fight, really bad for discipline healing too just because of the way it works, all heals are converted to a shield (just like normal) and that means the person who needs healing most isn't the person with the lowest HP but the person with the weakest shield.
That mechanic works great for all healing classes except for atonement healing as that targets the person at lowest HP, if that is your tank disc priest is happy priest as you can smite and heal just as before. If that person is a ranged DPS it sucks as all atonement healing could be hitting someone who has a full shield than your atonement is converted into over healing and you've got a sad disc priest.
Sure disc isn't a one trick pony, but if you gear for that one trick, and which disc priest doesn't? You are left high and dry spamming prayer of healing, Power Word: Shield on tanks and puddle soakers and hoping your DPS are smart enough to pull big numbers before your mana pool gets depleted because you've reforged and geared away from spirit.
Anyway, my kill I felt like a spare part because my numbers sucked, big time sucked. I've done more research into why and it seems I did only one thing wrong I used smite instead of prayer of healing.
I'll know this week to sort the groups so I have a tank in each group and can then spam Prayer of Healing on the two tanks. Simple fix, should provide better output but engaging gameplay? Hardly it is almost as bad as the PW:S spam from ICC. But hey, if it gets us to Spoils I'll be a happy disc priest, and if I replace my normal mode Sullen Fury with the HC one, I'll weep tears of joy.
Princess Aszune and Maiev Shadowsong the namesakes of our realms
Well OK not actually connected but that days is not far away as this week the announcement that I have been praying for each week finally came. Shadowsong EU is to get connected, To Aszune. Wait what realm? I'd never heard of it during my research into realm pops so this one had slipped through my radar completely, the cynic in me made me suspect that this realm connection was to a Horde biased realm and that wasn't going to help Shadowsong at all. So I got out the old detective kit and went searching for some positive news.
What I found was, thankfully, all good. Firstly I discovered that Aszune has a similar population balance to Shadowsong, both realms
have approx 60,000 characters with an Alliance heavy faction bias. This means that it puts the realms into the same character population bracket as Magtheridon.
Of
these characters about 20,000 on each realm are 90. So however you look
at it there will be double the number of characters around to raid/PVP
with which is bloody awesome. However, the physical trip to Aszune (OK it is virtual but I sent atoon there) revealed a realm that felt quiet just like Shadowsong. This isn't what Magtheridon feels like and there the population is 60k per faction. The merged Aszune/Shadowsong will have almost 100k Alliance. I suspect therefore that many of the realms characters are inactive. So while it may be good it won't feel very busy, but it will feel busier..
A look over at WoWProgress and Guild Ox shows that the
raiding is very similar on both servers although Aszune is rated
marginally higher than Shadowsong, this is good for my raid team even
though we will drop in the 10 man (from server 9th to server 21st) and
25 man rankings (from server 5th to server 9th).
PVP on
Aszune is also ranked slightly higher than it is on Shadowsong, this is
again good news for my RBG team but will mean that we have more
competition. We will still be ranked no 1, but we're only a few points
ahead of the top 3 RBGs teams there so we will need to keep focused and
work hard for our ranking from now on.
The chatter on Shadowsong is very positive about this and a few Shadowsongsters have made friendly posts on the Aszune realm forum although at the last look the same hasn't happened on the Shadowsong realm forum but at least the two communities are talking to each other which can only be good. I know my guild will be having a recruitment drive on Aszune soon and hopefully this will be the beginning of something great.
And finally, if, like me, you're thinking who/what/where is the realm named after.....
WoWPedia wrote: Aszune was a night elf
princess. Long ago she mocked the Oracle's wisdom. As punishment, she
was transformed into living stone. Only the retrieval of her gemstone
heart could end the curse.
Thrall happened upon the statue in
the caverns of Stonetalon Peak during the Third War. The statue's magic
created an impassable barrier, and the voice of Aszune spoke in
Thrall's mind. The imprisoned spirit told him that she would not allow
passage to the Oracle's domicile until her heart was returned to her.
Thrall
found the heart in the possession of a red dragon. The dragon was
under attack and nearly killed by harpies that were after its treasure.
Thrall retrieved the dragon's magical amulet and gave it to Aszune.
With this act, he ended the curse, allowing her spirit rest, and also
the barrier that denied him access to the Oracle was lowered.[1]
The
essence of Aszune's heart had come, through unknown means, into the
hands of the Kirin Tor of Dalaran (after the city was destroyed too, it
seems). They locked it away in the dungeons beneath the city, where it
was eventually found by Lady Vashj.[2]
The Pillars of Aszune is
a series of arcs on the Broken Isles that lead to the open sea. When
Maiev Shadowsong was fighting off the Naga forces, her runner got
through the Pillars of Aszune to reach Malfurion Stormrage on
Kalimdor.[3] The name of the pillars implies that Aszune lived before
the Great Sundering and was rather famous.
Nothing is known
about Aszune beyond the information revealed in the above missions of
Warcraft III. Her title suggests she might be related to Queen Azshara,
but no information on this has been established. She makes no
appearance in any document pertaining to the War of the Ancients - if
she was indeed related to Azshara then she was likely imprisoned some
time before the war, as no relations of Azshara would have gone
undocumented afterward. However, there are a few obscure highborne
princes featured in World of Warcraft, such as Prince Tortheldrin and
Prince Toreth (and possibly Lord Talendar in The Frozen Throne), and
she could have been their equivolent for the Kelani Magi, who had some
connection to the caverns and ruins beneath Stonetalon Peak. She was
also cursed for her arrogance, a trait typical of the Highborne. Her
name appears to be somewhat similar to Queen Azshara's."
My guild, Exhumed of Shadowsong EU are trying to build a Mythic raid team for Warlords. This is no secret in the guild or outside and that goal is something I am not just saying to make people feel good. I am heavily invested in this goal as I play the game for raiding remove raiding from my game time and I'll stop playing WoW all together.
One of the current main obstacles is recruiting new people because Shadowsong has a tiny population and too many raid guilds. However, I'm personally working hard in game to get that happening for us so Exhumed isn't a casualty of the conversion to Mythic raiding and there will be guilds that die because of this.
Recruitment is the primary reason we are putting together 25 man raids on a Sunday and Monday. Having experience from the real world of being a manager of people, I know that the best way of building a team is not to lose the team members you already have and to treat them so well that they not only want to stay, but they bring their friends here too because they're always telling their friends of what a great place it is here.
There is also a benefit to the team in keeping changes to a minimum and research has proven that teams, like individuals, experience a learning curve and as their members become familiar with one another the team becomes more successful and almost three quarters aviation "incidents" happen on the first day of flying together. I guess that is why our raid team does so well given that we only raid 6 hours per week.
However, you cannot always keep everyone happy enough for them not to leave for something better and if someone is set on achieving something we cannot offer them I'll gladly help them achieve their goal. But that means that they need to let me know before they go and sadly, that is something that didn't happen recently with one of our key raiders who left us because he didn't think we will be able to expand to 20-man, he may be correct but if I had known 3 weeks ago that he felt this way and was considering leaving I could have talked to him about why I think he was wrong and how I feel it can offer him what he would like to get out of the game in the future. If after that talk he still wanted to leave, I would have at least known and started recruiting specifically to fill the position while he was looking for a new guild, just as an employer would in the real world when you hand in your notice.
I consider all guildies friends and I'll always try to help my friends achieve their goals, even if it means having to wave to them as they leave. So I've asked my guildmates to speak with me if they're wanting more than the guild can offer them so hopefully we can work something out that means they don't have to leave us unless it is truly something greater than the guild can offer.
Am I being reasonable? Should I expect people that act like friends not to do things secretively? I think the answer to both those questions is yes. But then I guess that just my old fashioned ways from another era.
Been thinking a lot about this recently and how we can get the
benefits of a big server without moving everything off of Shadowsong.
What we're after is a bigger pool of players to recruit from than
Shadowsong is able to offer us. Somewhere like Silvermoon is perfect as it has a
big Alliance heavy population. It is a perfect realm for what we want,
but none of us really fancy the expense of moving 600 characters to a different realm, and I'm sure Blizzard would hate such an influx to what is already the EU's most populated Alliance biased PVE realm.
The question is do we have to?
With the way the game is moving I have always believed that Blizzards
ultimate goal is to have 4 "servers" in each region, PVP, PVE, RP and
RP-PVP. If I am correct our current server based communities will become
irrelevant and our recruitment pool will be everyone within the PVE
environment in the EU.
Therefore, I have thought about ways we can be "ahead of the curve"
and solve our current recruitment issue and I thik I have a crazy idea
that might just work.
Create a sister guild, called Exhumed, on Silvermoon and join forces to raid with them. The only two issues I see are:
our current website cannot deal with non-Shadowsong "guildies" and that makes managing event signups difficult;
Mythic raiding will not be possible cross realm;
No cross realm chat;
Both the first problems are easily solved by having those Mythic
raiders transfer to Shadowsong, which then only leaves the signup issue
for normal (aka flex), heroic (aka normal) and RBGs, which can be resolved by creating alts on Shadowsong purely for the purpose of signing up to events. The third problem is a big one that I cannot think of a way to solve, and may be the showstopper.
Not sure if this is a vision or delusion but I've put it to my fellow officers and get their opinions on the matter. No doubt I'll be declared a crazy fool!
So, Blizzard seems to have committed fully to no moe flight, at least not in the Warlords of Draenor expansion.The forums have exploded, and many tears are already being shed and many more will follow I'm sure. But is it really a bad thing?
There are of course many benefits to flight, we can fly direct from point A to point B is the most obvious one and with the magicl mystery tour that some flight paths take that really is a good thing. Then of course there is the fact that we can quest faster, why bother wading in through armies of mobs when we can drop into the exact spot highlighted on WoWHead and get exactly to the objective? It makes sense faster questing = faster levelling = WIN!
Also farming herbs and ores is very efficient whiel flying. The amounts you can farm per hour are dramatically higher than you can even on the fastest of ground mounts.
Other arguments for flying include:
it expands the world as points of interest can be hidden away in places that are hard to reach;
it gives us more content;
it provides for more variety in mounts;
it is better for short WoW sessions;
archaeology will suck;
it gives better game performance as there are less people consuming your FPS;
While all these are valid points some are stretching things, although not as far as the most bizarre point I've read from the pro-flying brigade; that Blizzard are doing this to save development costs as they won't need to develop in all directions.
My personal view is that it is actually a good thing overall. Sure I'll miss it but I'll cope because of the benefits that I hope it will bring.
The main benefit is that it will fill the world back up, I remember WoW as an MMO, outside of the majorr cities, it doesn't feel like a multi-player game. Because, the first few weeks of the expansion aside, you go out to a quest hub and you're likely the only one there. Now I always assumed that this was because people had levelled up and no longer went there. But thinking about it, early in every expansion nobody can fly.
It will also make questing feel immersive, Bashiok got it summed up best when he said:
Questing like this also gives you XP and the chance of loot drops that cn be sold earning you a few extra gold that you can then spend on your taxi rides! If Blizzard design the quests right you'll end up with multiple quests that you complete along the way to killing the end goal target. In Bashiok's example above, you could have the enemy leader is your primary quest and you have 3 side quests to kill 10 minions, collect 10 rifles and steal some invasion plans along the way. But we do have to hope they do that.
I also believe that we make more friends when we see others around, again I had put this down to moer people playing early in the expansionbut it is because you're more likely to group up to kill quest mobs rather than fight over them.
This re-poulation is good for more reason though, it allows guilds to grow and it prevents ne people falling into the trap of believing they are playing a solo game. Could it produce better players overall? Maybe not but it just might make everyone frendlier and less likely to break Wheaton's Law.
Some also argue that flying has killed world PvP, again while it has not helped world PvP, I think killed may be a bit of an exaggeration as half the servers are PvE and many PvP servers have ridiculous faction imbalances that they too may as well be considered PvE realms.
Blizzard are promising not to create crazy flight points and more importantly to add more flight points and both these points are essential to make life easy in Warlords without flight. The biggest irony? Our first visit to Draenor was the expansion that gave us flight and the Reins of the Raven Lord mount (which didn't fly) and our reward for purchasing the Collector's Edition of the expansion that sees us return to Draenor is Reins of the Dread Raven, a a revised version of the original, that does fly. Go figure!
Interested in joining me at Exhumed on Shadowsong EU?
Exhumed is a guild for the time challenged mature player. We're focused on raiding and PVP progression but won't penalise you if you put real life before the game.
We are currently recruiting for PVPers, healers for our 2nd raid team and social members.
By day I'm an IT Server analyst for a major telecoms compnay in the UK and I've been playing World of Warcraft since November 2005 when a pair of colleagues bullied me into playing! I have evolved into a raider (summer 2006), an auction house wheeler dealer (2007), a guild officer (2007), an altoholic (2008), a raid leader (2008), a Warcraft blogger (2010) and a PVPer (2012)
My main has, and always will be Evlyxx, a priest and I love to heal. I started as Holy in vanilla, dabbled with the shadow side during the middle part of Burning Crusade, before returning to Holy but I have been mostly Discipline since mid-Wrath.
