In a discussion of tanking mechanics on the forums, Ghostcrawler made a long and in depth post about various subjects that helped consolidate one of the real problems with block and block value in Wrath of the Lich King. Not only is blocking something that only two of the four tanking classes do, but it’s a pretty lackluster stat for boss tanking. Block as a mechanic is gold wowsomewhere between avoidance and mitigation. Ideally it removes a fair amount of damage (vs. all damage) reasonably often (vs. rarely). If block is up 100% of the time it just becomes armor that you improve through a different stat. We have let block chances creep up frankly because the amount blocked is pretty trivial when bosses are hitting for 40% of your health pool every swing. If this still strikes you as too RNG, imagine abilities like Shield Block and Holy Shield that could guarantee 100% chance to block for a short period of time. We don’t think block is cutting it as a mechanic, but the direction we are likely to take it is probably more of a change than you are considering. The

Snowyfox of the US Vek’nilash server recently brought up a point on the forums which is near and dear to my heart: 5-mans really feel like they’ve lost their heart. In both Vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade, you could usually count on having the motivation and reward for running a 5 man no matter what your level. In Vanilla WoW, you might do a tribute run for potions and buffs or a Stratholme run for Abomination stitchings for an enchant. In BC, you’d run for badges. In Wrath of the Lich King… not so much. Badges don’t stretch so far since most of the good stuff requires badges only obtained in raid dungeons, and even the daily quests aren’t even close to as lucrative as just heading up to the Argent Tournament or over to the Sons of Hodir and doing some dailies. Yet 5-mans, in many ways, are the heart of the game. They’re where you cut your teeth on group mechanics and really learning your class. While there are many PuG horror stories, they can also be a place to meet new friends and prospective guild members. They’re a nice way to

World of Warcraft was first announced by Blizzard at the ECTS trade show in September 2001.[36] Development of the game took roughly 4–5 years, and included extensive testing. The 3-D graphics in WoW use elements of the proprietary graphics engine originally used in Warcraft III.[36] The game was designed to be an open environment where players are allowed to do what they please.[37] Quests are optional and were designed to help guide players, allow character development, and to spread characters across different zones to try to avoid what wow gold kaufendevelopers called ‘player collision’.[38] The game interface allows players to customize appearance and controls, and to install add-ons and other modifications.[39] World of Warcraft runs natively on both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Boxed copies of the game use a hybrid CD to install the game, eliminating the need for separate Mac and Windows retail products. The game allows all users to play together, regardless of their operating system. Although there is no official version for any other platform, support

A couple of new things about the Patch 3.1 PTR this morning for you all. Dual specs, character copying, premades, downloading, vendors, and PTR release; it’s like our own version of lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Premade Characters No plans to have them be available. This doesn’t completely rule them out, but Blizzard is wow gold kaufenusually pretty upfront with us if they’re going to allow us to make some premade characters. Dual Spec is not finalized There is a lot of QQ already about dual specs and how they will work. We’ve seen everyone under the sun now tell us that the system isn’t finalized. That means that the level 80 requirement for dual specs is still the way it’ll be, but that could change in a heartbeat. Character Copy Blizzard will (or already has) wiped the PTR clean of all characters, so if you copied your character over already you’ll need to do it again soon (we’ll try to figure out when). And of course, this does not in any way affect your live-realm character. We know… it’s a “duh”

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider’s daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Adam called yesterday’s edition of The Queue ‘the Extreme edition,’ but I’m of the opinion he didn’t quite follow through. So I’m posting something extreme to make up for it, which you can see in the video above. Extreme. If you don’t feel it’s extreme enough, feel free to post your extreme links in the comments below with your usual questions, as long as the links are safe for work (and sanity.) Eternauta asked… I have a question, too. I know it’s pretty stupid and obvious, but wow goldhere I go: Why is everybody DPS and why is it so hard to find healers or tanks?   Heh, come on over to my server. We have a glut of Tanks and Healers and I can never find any freakin’ DPS for my Heroic groups. I leveled up my Prot Paladin because I wanted to do some level 80 tanking, and DPS simply do not exist on my server. It’s horrible. My

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Are there too many Disc Priests? Is it becoming overwhelming? The popularity of Discipline has started to spread. I don’t believe it’s wow goldbeen entirely adopted just yet. There’s still a few hold outs who continue to think that Discipline is not able to hold it’s own against the other specs and classes. By hold its own, I mean stand up and compare to. Now obviously other healing classes will believe that their class is superior and they should because we do have a certain loyalty to ourselves. I respect the capabilities of Paladins, Druids, and Shamans. I don’t think they’re inferior. But I’m still going to be a Priest for life. There can never be enough Disc Priests! I am proud to be a Discipline Priest. It is not just a style. It is not a simple technique. It is a way of life. I know

We noted an error earlier this evening which was causing the Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone to be reset prematurely. Since ending epic battles early is a bad thing, Blizzard has gone ahead and “shut off Wintergrasp” completely for the time being. This change is affecting all realms. There is no word when a fix will come through, but we’re hopeful it will happen sometime soon. Disabling an entire part of the game is a big thing, and an error that usually is corrected quickly. Some speculation points to the change in daily (now weekly) quests that just went in, however there is no evidence to support this. Filed under: Bugs, News items

Good Tuesday Morning, Everyone! While we’re still recovering from the server downtime from last night, we have a whole new patch to muddle through as well, including extended downtime. Not only are all servers down from 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific, but some servers are getting the longer wow goldtreatment, staying down til 1 PM Pacific. Check here for the list. With that in mind, Tuesday morning is once again the perfect time to catch up on the latest WoW news. Number one story this week was, of course, BlizzCon. Whether for an excuse to take a trip to a Anaheim, to get Grunty, or to (tsk, tsk) just scalp the tickets, thousands of people jumped in the Queue on the morning of May 16th to try to grab those precious tickets. We can say it did at least go smoother than last year, not that’s much comfort to those who didn’t manage to grab a ticket. Luckily, there’s one more sell date on May 30th, and good luck to everyone lining up. Of course, while we continue to see quick hot fixes, we’re also expecting a patch to drop soon, Patch 3.1.2, to be exact. Some

Tickets are sold out for the day, and most of us are probably a little angry, but don’t forget! There’s another day of ticket sales on the 30th! If you haven’t made your decision on whether you want to go or not yet, you’re running out of time and it’s probably a good time to look back on the BlizzCon that was. BlizzCon 2008 lacked any major World of Warcraft announcements, Blizzard’s other franchises stole the spotlight last year, but that doesn’t mean WoW wasn’t there in spades. Let’s take a moment to look back on that, shall we? The Opening Ceremonies BlizzCon 2008 kicked off with the opening ceremonies, hosted by Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. Morhaime delivered many facts and figures about wow goldthe World of Warcraft at the time (if WoW were a country, it would be the 75th largest in the world), and announced a new class for Diablo III: The Wizard. The PvP Panel Liveblog BlizzCon 2008’s PvP Panel was the first time many World of Warcraft players saw what Wrath of the Lich King was bringing to the table

If you’ve been reading this column over the past few weeks you know I’ve been threatening to rant about fury DPS being too low. I’ve stopped myself because I dislike wow goldmindless griping and rant posts (I’ve done them in the past, that doesn’t make them any more palatable to me) and I wanted to wait and see how things shook out with better gear. By now I have some of the best gear you can get before hard modes in 25 man, and my general opinion is that both arms and fury DPS is too low. I linked to that post because, despite the fact that it states that fury and arms will see buffs, it not only has no specifics to offer yet but it also fails to address why such staggering nerfs were implemented in the first place. One of the nerfs, the change to Improved Berserker Stance, would in fact be a buff if not for how Blizzard itemizes four stat gear vs. five stat gear. By making this change (obstensibly to point warriors at strength gear over agility/AP gear) you get a situation where fury warriors can choose strength gear with four stats to gain the