So it’s probably not exactly the latest and greatest in Warcraft PC designs (though it might be a little later than the ghost train pirate art). But still, it looks great. And I definitely wouldn’t mind wandering around Azeroth on that rather than my current gigantic black tower of a PC.

Update: Turns out the case is for sale. That is, if you want to spend $299 on a case.

[via Technabob] www.wow.com

Reader comments — ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Looking for sweet, sweet sarcasm? [1.Local] is full of smart alecs. You’ll get a good taste of sarcasm in this week’s sampling of comments, as well as pointers to WoW’s hottest topics … Oh, and a virtual wave of reader approval. But before we dig in, how about seconds of this week’s WoW-themed dessert?

MusedMoose: Dude! It’s the legendary sword Frostingmourne, weapon of the Lick King!

… I’ll go now.

Us, too. Let’s wipe off the frosting and head past the jump for more of the week’s comments.

	How not to aggro your tank with AoE Writer Matthew Rossi fired up readers with one of the week’s most popular posts. “Reader UnstØppable writes in with a question I thought would benefit others,” he wrote. “‘Does the Bladestorm aggro problem ever get better? What I mean is, I’ve seen it countless times, the arms warrior enters the dungeon, the tank lets out a sigh (sometimes it’s me), we pull the first group and everything goes fine, until he hits that Bladestorm button. That’s when somehow he manages to pull aggro from every mob and their mom and makes both the healer’s and the tank’s lives hell or usually ends up dying within seconds.’” PUGgers desperate for tips to keep Dungeon Finder groups on track received the answer with unbridled enthusiasm. DraconisXC: *slow clap* (cutaia): *adds to slow clap, making it a slightly faster slow clap but not quite thunderous applause* Razortooth: *thunderous applause* Alexisonfire: *Standing Ovation* Sir7: *Shouts of encore!* nomadic0ne: *Throwing underwear on the stage!* Dane Bramage: *just stands in awe* marco: *dances naked around the fire* Walynds: /cheer Joerendous: *begins the Wave* vazhkatsi: Crowd Surfs DeathPaladin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxvdvoQgAy8 Cyanea: *waves lighter in the air* Rmschoir: *Hits Bladestorm two seconds into a pull* Baltor: *C-c-c-combo breaker.* Joseph Smith: *hits unglyphed Starfall* … my bad, sorry Catch the wave yourself with Rossi’s tips on how not to out-aggro your tank.
	An army of one We have to admit that the latest gold seller tactic — armies of level one alts moving in virtual lockstep through capital cities — is certainly eye-catching. But how do readers who’ve actually experienced the invasions feel about the new phenomenon? James: All these people who think this is so much fun need to endure it yourself. It nearly crashed my session! You will be very bored of this stunt very soon. And what’s more, you can’t even work out the name of the site … It fails. lolikitty: An army of Orcs in front of the Orgrimmar AH, a few feet above the ground, /saluting in unison … absolutely terrifying. I mean it. (Not to mention the spam of emotes.) Maymer: *Cue Star Wars Imperial music* IT’S A TRAP!!!!! Our ignore lists can’t repel spammers of this magnitude!!!!!
	How to fight a druid Another article that got plenty of reader appreciation this week was Zach Yonzon’s look at how to fight a druid. SunwellVialist: This … is an amazing write-up. Even though you spoil all of our drood secrets to the world, I cannot help but enjoy reading it — and hell, it even gave me a few ideas for better surviving with my druid. FoxOfWar: I have to admit, while I am primarily a PvE player, occasionally doing Wintergrasp/Battlegrounds as tree is something so devilishly fun it’s probably illegal in some countries. It’s amazing just how long it takes sometimes for people to realize that their target is not dying because there’s someone spamming HoTs on them 40 yards away. Druid heals are relatively flashy, after all. And really, being alive for a whole AV is just good feeling (even moreso when I was still leveling and AV actually lasted a fair bit of time). Being 15 minutes in perma-combat, spamming HoTs and staying alive for all that time is just fun. I’ve never played Arena, so cannot comment on that. But at least on Battlegrounds, playing a druid is fun. Excellent write-up. MushMush: Great article. As far as PvP goes, my weakness lies in not having played any other classes. I don’t totally understand what other classes’ full abilities and limitations are. Thanks a ton — can’t wait to read the write-ups on the other classes. Thanks. Don’t miss the next set in the series on fighting death knights.
	Raid, PUG habits should be kept separate “I am not arguing that you shouldn’t do your best if you’re running a pickup group,” writes Matthew Rossi. “I’m arguing that you have no reason to hold the other four people to a standard of play they haven’t signed up for or agreed to.” Would you agree? Cor: As a main spec tank, I tend to tank my first PUG each day and them if I’m up for more I go DPS. I suffer a similar issue as Matt but not from the under performing players. It’s the over achivers that drive me nuts. Yes, I can hold aggro from someone doing 7k AE DPS (or more in raids), but in a PUG I honestly don’t want to work that hard. The difference between driving like mad through a dungeon is maybe 5 minutes? I’m no longer willing to run myself ragged trying to save people that 5 minutes. At this point, I’m done arguing with people. If someone wants to rush, I will keep up, but I put them on ignore before the final boss so I don’t have to PUG with them again. I fear my ignore list is going to end up being too small. =) omedon666: I wish I knew a code method to flash this in huge letters across the screen, but THANK. YOU. My guild is small, friendly and “five-man centric”, because most of us don’t give a damn to sell our souls to theorycrafting or scheduling enough to raid — and that doesn’t make us lazy, it makes us, well, us. We aren’t terribad. We aren’t out to wreck some raider’s time efficiency or “disrespect them” with our lack of mad leet raider skills (this attitude makes me furious in its audacity). We’re just out for a good time in small-group, intimate content. I use blue gems not as an insult to you, but because the price difference for another four points of whatever just isn’t a.) worth it and b.) required for five-man content. I hate the idea of having maggots swirling around my DK, so I don’t have blood worms. I instead have on a pale horse and Mark of Blood, because I’ve saved groups with it and because I like flying faster when I’m not grouping with you. I still like upgrades. I still enjoy the game. But I enjoy it at my pace. So when I encounter someone in PUGs that says “I hate heroics; I’m here for emblems for raiding gear, so STFU and keep up” and then proceeds to back that attitude up with how they run the instance, yes, I will vote kick you ASAP because you are rude, wrecking at least one person’s fun and doing so bringing your raiding habits into a five-man. 7k DPS is not needed to DPS a heroic. It’s nice, but it’s not needed. 50k health is not needed to tank a heroic. It’s nice, but it’s not needed. 30k mana is not needed to heal a heroic. It’s nice, but it’s not needed. Raiders aren’t evil. Some of my best friends are raiders, but when you “step down” in content, remember that that content is as much some peoples’ bread and butter as your 25-man hard modes, and those people are people, too. Thank you for this article. It’s nice to know that we’re not expected to just “suck it up” by everyone. Slaytanic: Ugh. Guilty as charged. I’m extremely spoiled. Being in a top-end guild on my server, I have very little patience for stupidity. I won’t scream at people (being heals, I don’t have time), but I currently have a two-wipe policy. We wipe twice, I bail and re-roll. There are exceptions to the rule. The other night I was in VH, and my group just got creamed by Xevozz. Normally, since this was the first boss, it’s really easy to drop. But my group came to me, and asked for advice on how to beat him. I had to remind myself that I was in their very same shoes at one time, that this guy kicked my ass in regular mode. After taking the time to calm down and explain the fight (to a group young, but eager to learn), we beat him and the rest of the instance. Humbling, and ultimately fun.
	How does the Dungeon Finder affect smaller realms? While many players think the Dungeon Finder is the greatest thing since sliced bread, some players wistfully observe that it seems to have swamped the fledgling PUG communities on smaller realms. Angelyne: I agree. While I wouldn’t want to go back to the bad old days, I feel that the LFG tool has introduced a whole new level of anonymity to this game. I might as well be grouping with NPCs, for all the interactions that I see in five-mans — except that with NPCs, you get consistent results and no chance of being jerked around. This is supposed to be a social game, yet I have never played an online game where it’s so difficult to make any kind of lasting social contact. Everyone is intent on doing his/her thing, and groups will never last longer that strictly necessary. I started playing online games back in the old Meridian 59 days. I then played Ultima Online and EverQuest. All of these games appeared truly social to me. I made tons of online friends, seemingly effortlessly. In WoW, it’s like pulling teeth. Maybe it’s a small town/big city type of thing. Neirin: As a resident of an extremely small server (US Maiev), I actually think the Dungeon Finder has benefitted PUG opportunities. ICC PUGs are still semi-difficult to get running, but the gear crutch from heroics is frequently enough for a few experienced players to get others through ToC or Uld HMs. The real loss is the social one. Less people sitting in trade looking for a tank/healer means a lot less interaction. Since we low-pop lovers really pride ourselves on our communities, the loss of some of our interaction is pretty bad. I know a few people that xfered because they were only staying for the community and felt like it had kinda fallen apart.
	Russian commercial rips off Lich King trailer The sarcasm was back in full force in this post on a Russian cologne commercial that bears a striking resemblance to a certain frosty scenario. Hivetyrant: If I wear this cologne, does everyone around me get a -% to dodge? Leviathon: My son, on the day you born, the very forests of Russia whispered the name Plushenko. I watched with pride as you grew into a weapon of skating. Our line has always skated with grace and dignity. And I know you will show restraint when exercising your great power. But know that the truest victory, is giving your people a fresh, lasting cologne. I tell you this, for when my days have come to an end, you shall be king of Oriflame.

The Who is WoW.com? meme

Here at WoW.com, we’ve been accused of being dim bulbs before — but this is ridiculous …

Name: [redacted]
URL:
Subject: Bulb replacment

Looking for a Bulb replacement for train 07125 Where can i buy them.
Thank you [name] Cell (XXX)XXX-XXXXHome(XXX)XXX-XXXX

Related URL: http://

Sounds like this customer needs a good Toy Train Set.

Until next week!

The Care and Feeding of Warriors is WoW.com’s weekly column for all things angry and clanky. Matthew Rossi writes it, when he’s not busy being angry and clanky.

Dev Chat Update: While today’s post is about fury, it’s worth mentioning that in addition to nerfing Shield Block’s contribution to Shield Slam, we will supposedly see a threat buff to the ability. Hopefully it’s a scaling, and not a static, threat buff, something that adds X threat for every Y block value or something. They’d also supposedly like to add sustained damage to prot for PvE without PvP burstiness, which would be nice if it happened..

Lately I get plenty of tanking action in raids, to the point where I honestly don’t want to do it in PuG’s. When musing about it the other day I realized that I’m too used to hard modes and progression when tanking: I demand perfection of myself to such a degree that I get tense and stressed over the smallest error in execution. This is possibly admirable (when not taken too far) in a raid setting on a new boss where strategies are being tested and modified constantly and everything’s on the razor’s edge between being able to pass the checks inherent to the content.

It’s not when you’re PuGging Halls of Lightning for a couple of extra Emblems of Frost.

In fact, what can help you get past Rotface is downright madness causing when heading down to Loken. At this point, Loken holds no surprises, and neither does the trash. Being a tanking perfectionist just leads you to tend towards freaking the heck out over stupid crap bored people do, and that’s turning the game from fun to a drag for yourself. (It probably does for them, too, but they can look out for themselves.) Lately, I’ve taken to running the random daily and any 10 mans I PuG on my own as DPS, just to get a break from my own self-imposed desire to try for flawless execution. (I’m not saying I ever accomplish that, by the way, just that I want to.)

And I have to say: fury got good again when I wasn’t looking.

Part of it is that I finally went out and stacked the ArP I was resisting for so long. I knew it was good, mind you… I’ve been saying that they were going to make us want ArP since before Ulduar came out… but I resisted it myself because I have always liked stacking strength. It’s kind of annoying to admit that to myself now. Then again, it’s a lot easier to get a lot of passive ArP now: before a trinket I can be at an easy 75% ArP if I wear every piece I have (which I won’t because it drops my expertise too low, mind you, but even at 26 exp I’m at 60% ArP right now).

Part of it is also the weapons. Current weapons have more raw DPS, better stat spreads, and in the case of Bryntroll an absolutely savage proc. (Now, I tank almost exclusively in 25 man raids so I’m not getting a Bryn until everyone who DPS’s with a 2h gets one, mind you, but truth is truth and Bryn’s proc is a solid 4% of a fury warrior’s DPS.) Set pieces for DPS warriors seem pretty solid to me but it’s really 2h’s like Ramladni’s and the Citadel’s having really nice spreads that helps jump the DPS up quickly. (Upgrading from the Sharpened OEB and Reckoning to the two ICC 10 2h saw close to 700 DPS almost immediately.)

To be honest, some of the non-set plate has been underwhelming so far, at least in 10’s. Comparing the Deathspeaker Zealot’s Helm to the Helm of Thunderous Rampage is somewhat underwhelming for a fury warrior. (I know very little about ret paladins but I’m told the haste on the DZH is better for them than ArP.) It’s certainly not a bad hat, mind you, but it doesn’t stand out as astonishing the way the weapons do. Still, this isn’t meant to be a gear list piece (I should do one of those, mind you) and for the most part a mixture of TotC/TotGC and ICC gear will serve a fury warrior just fine. For that matter, there’s some very nice pieces in the new ICC 5 mans for those of us coming in late, so to speak: solid trinkets, good weapons, even solid DPS plate. And of course Emblems of Triumph (and Frost if you’re raiding and/or doing the daily random) for tier and non-set pieces like the aforementioned Helm of Thunderous Rampage and its Horde equivalent, which my tauren is grinding for when I get the chance to run on him.

All of this is really beside the point, however, and deserves (and will get, I promise) a full column or more to really explicate. The point is simply that, at this point in the expansion’s life cycle there’s plenty of gear for you to equip your fury warrior in order to get serious about putting out DPS, with options to help you customize your stats without desperately waiting for Malygos 25 to drop a pair of boots he’ll never drop. Up until TotGC I saw warriors still trying for those bloody Melancholy Sabatons, man. You can argue that the Grinning Skull’s aren’t quite as good (which is debatable depending on your other stats) but man, they’re a lot easier to get.

You can get iLevel 232 or better gear just by sticking out the grind and move into raiding pretty easily, and in general the fights (especially the trash) in the new 5 mans and the ICC raid itself are pretty fury friendly. Well, okay, Deathwhisper’s a PITA and Rotface makes you run all over the place, but fights like Deathbringer Saurfang and Festergut are pretty solid DPS fights for fury. You’ll probably not be number 1 on the meter if you have a good solid rogue in your raid, but you can definitely contribute. As for heroics, a lot of that depends on how much threat your tank can put out, how much moving he or she does, how much AoE there is, etc etc but I’m not having any trouble as DPS in them so far. Threat’s my only real limiter (I really, really wish I had a threat dump). How much of this is just the spec once again proving that it scales ridiculously well with the right gear and insanely poorly without it… well, there’s always been that aspect to playing fury.

I’ll also admit to dusting off one of my warrior alts I abandoned months ago on another server and occasionally PuGging with him just for giggles. He’s level 77 now after a couple of days of dungeon finder madness, and while I’m hardly setting any DPS records on him in my mismatched blues and greens, it’s been pretty fun so far.

Ironically, now that I’m a dedicated tank and pretty happy about it, DPS is finally fun again. I’m working on an arms set to play around with now that I have a decent axe and sword to compare against each other (you’ll probably hear about that next week). I’m also contemplating writing about fury tanking some of these instances. No, I don’t mean wearing tank gear, I mean in full DPS gear, in zerk stance, just going ballistic on everything in sight. It requires a tolerant, well geared healer, but it’s not that hard to do at this point. (You can even slap on some PvP gear if you’re worried about crits. I don’t, but you can.) However, that does fall under the category of stupid warrior tricks and I don’t want to encourage fresh 80’s in quest gear to try it, so we’ll see.

Also, yes, I avoided talking about prot PvP nerfs this week. Why? Well, because I’m waiting to see them in action, and also, I’m kind of torn between being afraid they wreck the class for tanking and hoping that they make prot warriors so incapable of doing anything but tanking bosses that we end up de facto main tanks because other classes are better for everything else. Rotface’s oozes come to mind. Sure, a warrior can taunt spam one but with paladins and DK’s having so much more options for ranged threat, why would you have the warrior do it? Put him on the boss.a

When Monday night rolls around, I have a ritual that I follow without fail: I check the official server status forums and the launch tool waiting for any word on the maintenance window for Tuesday mornings over and over again. Most weeks, I’m lucky to get it by 10 PM pacific, if not midnight. Every once in a while there’s an early announcement, but that’s very, very rare.

So it was some surprise to me to see a Saturday afternoon announcement from blue poster Enthati. We’ll be having some downtime this Tuesday from 5 AM pacific to approximately 11 AM pacific. This is honestly probably the earliest I can recall ever seeing a downtime announcement go up. This, in turn, makes me wonder if something’s up. 5-11 is a pretty short window, not enough to expect a patch, I’d think.

Of course, I’m all for earlier advanced notice of downtime, so you won’t hear me complain if this early announcement is just a new policy. If nothing else, I’ll be able to go to bed earlier on Monday nights. And on Tuesday morning, you can head over here for all the latest news on the server downtime and all the other happenings around the world of WoW.

Good news everyone!

The second wing in Icecrown Citadel is open. Inside the Plagueworks, we’ll be taking on the next generation of abominations that Arthas and his lackeys have been working on. Festergut, Rotface and Professor Putricide will be available for your raid.

Have you fought them yet? Which one is your favourite? Festergut will be a bit chaotic the first time you go in there. Be careful of the gas in the room. Rotface looks to be a technical fight that demands some precision in movement from players. Watch out for the oozes!

Now Professor Putricide? We’ve been fighting abominations in Icecrown and other places. This time we get to fight as one. All you have to do is drink a potion and voila! If you haven’t heard his audio yet, you’ll be in for a treat. He’s got some amazingly catchy sayings. Perhaps in the future, we’ll do a roundup post of the best lines and quotes that Wrath of the Lich King had to offer. If you haven’t done the wing yet, which boss are you looking forward to? If you have, which is your favourite?

Note: You only get 10 attempts on Professor Putricide before he despawns for the week. Use them wisely!

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment in this post by Sunday, January 3, 2010, 11:59pm ET. Limit one entry per person and make sure you’re registered with a valid email address. We’ll be choosing one winner randomly from the entrants and contact them via email after the close of the contest.

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!

Like so much of Wowcrendor’s work, it’s not only the in-game references that make his work relay so much truth. It’s also the subtle nod to universal experiences. (For example, my favorite part is when you choose to not do the quest. If you go down that path, your guild leader yells at you to get your act together. C’mon, haven’t we all been there at one point or another?)

As a note, make sure you do not simply play this video. The experience is best if you visit Wowcrendor’s start page for this adventure.

Yesterday, Bornakk said clearly that the Battered Hilt drop that starts the Quel’delar questline was dropping at the right rate, which is much less than when the patch first hit. And then of course, in last night’s fixes, they went ahead and increased the drop rate anyway. He also claimed there were no plans to make it BoP, but who knows what’ll happen in the future? For now, however, you can still buy and sell the quest item for quite a bit of gold. We’ll have to see where the price eventually ends up — on the staff here, we’ve seen anything from 8,000g to over 23,000g, and Twitter tells us that people are paying an average of around 12k or so, going up to as high as 30k (or even shady real money offers in online classified ads). Our own Matt Low has actually seen the drop three different times, and lost every roll. It drops off of any of the mobs in the Heroic versions of the Frozen Halls 5-mans, and as Bornakk says, any class can use it to come up with a pretty solid weapon, so the competition will probably keep the price high, depending on where the drop rate ends up.

The silver lining, if you really want one, have terrible luck, and don’t ever expect to have all that money, is that the price will probably go down eventually. Bornakk says that as people move up into Icecrown and start picking up weapons that are even better than the sister blade, demand is likely to drop off a bit. But he also says that Blizzard does want this to be a special and relatively rare item, so you’ll still have to probably either be lucky or ready to grind it out. Good luck — I’m out there searching for one with you.

Our podcast is live on the virtual air today at 3:30pm Eastern (8:30pm GMT) over on Ustream, and it’s an all-star show for sure. We’ll have Michael “Belfaire” Sacco, Matthew W. Rossi, and Adam Holisky all on the show with us, so I don’t expect to have to say anything. Maybe I’ll just shout out something like “patch 3.3″ and see what evolves from there. But Turpster and I will still be on, and if we can corral these guys, we’ll be talking about how big a change the Dungeon Finder really is, Corehound Pups in the mail for Authenticator users, and this patch in general. Should be quite a show.

And we’ll be answering your emails — if you have a question for any of us, feel free to send it along to theshow@wow.com. And of course we’ll be doing the usual preshow and aftershow, so if you plan to turn up live after the break (or listen via the Ustream app on the iPhone), make sure to stick around for a little bit afterwards and we’ll be chatting with you directly. See you this afternoon!

Hey, folks! What are you doing sitting on the couch playing Left 4 Dead again? The new patch is out! You’re not going to let a bit of lag and a few instance server crashes keep you from storming Icecrown Citadel, are you? Just look at this dude! He’s sitting here, waving his spiky club and inexplicably blunt wooden axe, just taunting you. Are you going to take that from an undead Viking dude? Get in there and defend your honor! (Thanks to Azulsyr of <No Remorse> on Gilneas for the pic.)

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.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. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.