What was going on in World of Warcraft this time last year? Back in the Day looks into the past of WoW Insider and brings back posts notable, controversial and sometimes humorous reflecting the state of the game one year ago this week.

For the week of January 27 - February 2, 2007:

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With all of the buzz related to patch 2.4 lately, I wanted to take a moment to look at one particular change that our friendly neighborhood healers and tanks will really appreciate.

Respecs have always been a bit of a pain in the butt. Unless you are willing to align and keep your talents so that you are proficient at one aspect of the game, but weakened significantly in all others, you likely find yourself paying through the nose periodically to change your specialization and talents.

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Even if you don't play the official Trading Card Game, the latest wallpaper released is certainly worth a download. While you're there grabbing your new desktop background, you might as well peruse some of the newest fan artwork. My personal pick is the brooding dwarf, submitted by http://fdiskart.deviantart.com.

Don't forget: Blizzard is currently seeking top notch screenshots from Auchindoun: Auchenai Crypts. Whether you focus on the beauty and architecture, or are taking real-time combat shots, Blizzard wants your submissions.

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Going back to just hefty loot today, since we've been doing high end stuff for a few weeks now. This is a non-engineer explosive that packs about as big a punch as you're going to get.

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Whether you're a bear or you clank around in plate, the two rage-based tanking classes have some changes incoming in patch 2.4, according to Bornaak. First up, you druid tanks, Lacerate is seeing a damage increase to scale with attack power, which should help you whether you're a tank or not, but since lacerate is a key threat move for bear tanks it seems like good news on that front.

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Continuing the deluge of patch 2.4 news, Eyonix and Bornakk, the brave souls they are, took to the class forums to bring us some joy! So far, they're relatively minor, but every little bit helps.

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This is probably the best news I've heard so far all year: Blizzard has won an injunction against Peons4Hire (we'll say their name now), which means that the one-time constant chat spammer is now legally banned from interfering with the game. It sounds like Blizzard sued on nearly all the causes that were speculated on a while ago, and as a result, have outright won their case: according to the injunction, In Game Dollar (the company that advertised Peons4Hire) is "permanently enjoined" from "making any use of the World of Warcraft in-game communication or chat system to advertise any website, business, or commercial endeavor."

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Lots of activity today over on the forums from the Blizzard CMs. A few miscellaneous items in patch 2.4 that are sure to make people happy:

First there is the fishing daily. Blizzard is continuing their trend of increasing the number of daily quests we can choose from. Drysc tells us that in 2.4 we'll be able to visit "the mysterious old man" near Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath for the quest.

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The European forums see some 2.4 news dropping, as we find out that Doom Lord Kazzak and Doomwalker will see their drops go from BoP to BoE, 25 man raid content will see their token drops increase by one to three tokens per token dropping boss, gems from Heroics will no longer be unique, and reputation with the Scale of the Sands will now be greatly increased.

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The CMs are doing a real drive-by on the forums this afternoon. The latest tidbit dropped by Drysc (in an only barely related thread) is that spell haste will reduce the global cooldown on spells, to a minimum of one second. It will not apply to melee or ranged attacks. Previously (and currently, as of this writing), Spell Haste was capped out by the Global Cooldown-- it doesn't matter how fast your spellcasting went, because you were stuck with the 1.5 second Global Cooldown every time you cast. But as of 2.4, that cap will go bye-bye for casters, leaving them to rack up as much Spell Haste as they can, aiming towards a 1 second global cooldown.

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Drysc, in response to a fledgling prophet, just made an interesting announcement regarding Enchanting, and certainly one that most people will love.

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Blue posters are currently posting a lot of 2.4 details.

Quote from Blizzard staffGeneral

• Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers. (Source)
  
• Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities. (Source)
  
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Quote from Blizzard staffAn issue has been identified that is sometimes causing players to be removed from the wrong Arena Team when attempting to leave a different team (being removed from the 5v5 team when trying to leave the 2v2 team, for example).

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Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Are you a tradesman -- or are you simply a player who crafts? The determining factor is yet another question: Do you care? For the vast majority of WoW players, crafting is a means to an end: better gear, more money, consumables and resources. For others, though, crafting is a game in and of itself. The WoW tradesman relishes the entire process of crafting: training up, obtaining rare recipes, scrounging mats, actually crafting items, researching new possibilities, interacting with customers ... an enjoyable pursuit in its own right.

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It's common knowledge that Blizzard has put a lot of effort to avoid players from exploiting the honor gains system in World of Warcraft.

One of the security measures implemented by the company is diminishing honor returns when repeatedly killing a single player. In patch 2.4, this feature will no longer be active thanks to better honor and battleground systems.

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This news will be updated several times, so stay tuned.

Diminishing Returns Removed from Honor in 2.4

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Blue posters are currently posting a lot of 2.4 details, I'll assume they're prereleasing the patch notes.

This post will be updated regularly.

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It looks like we have a bit of insight on Blizzard's plans to move World of Warcraft on to the mobile scene. No, it's not exactly remote access gameplay of your WoW characters on your mobile phone but something a little more toned down.

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, Blizzard filed a patent for a virtual network telecommunications service called BattleChat, which perhaps gives a clue on what the company has planned. Couple this with the previous job openings for mobile developers posted a few months back, and we may finally have an idea of what mobile features the MMORPG will be sporting in the future.

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According to Drysc, 2.4 will fix one of the biggest issues causing minimal honor gain for losing teams in Battlegrounds, namely Diminishing Returns.

As things stand currently, according to Drysc, "What diminishing returns mean for honor is that each subsequent kill of the same target will reward you with less and less honor; 10% less per kill to be exact. One of the major downsides to diminishing returns is that the calculations, for potentially hundreds of thousands of players, is too intense to do real time, so they are calculated during off-peak hours. This in turn requires that the honor you gain be temporarily displayed as "estimated" until the calculations are run. It's a system that we've certainly improved (moving the calculation from weekly to daily) but still always disliked. It creates a very uninteresting and sometimes aggravating or confusing detachment from your achievements and the actual reward."

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Our podcast is going live on the air again tomorrow afternoon (as we do every Saturday afternoon). This week, Mike Schramm (that's me, in case you don't read blogger credit lines) and Alex Ziebart (one of our new bloggers) are taking the virtual airwaves, as well as someone from WoW Radio. Yes, unfortunately, we're told that Turpster can't make it this week, but I'm sure we'll have someone just as qualified (and probably even more talented) on-- I hear Duncor (he of WoW Things Considered fame) may be able to make it in for a chat.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is as always here for you, the reader, oh and also because Matthew Rossi is some kind of demented idiot who will do something like get out of tanking a raid and then spend two hours grinding on some Blade's Edge quests on his draenei warrior before logging onto his tauren for some PvP. We figure it's best to let him do all his rambling about the class in one place before he has an aneurysm.

Reader Arnold Luschin emailed in recently with what seemed to me a worthy topic for this week's column. Rather than mangle what he said, I'll reproduce it here.

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Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Kara or BT, everyone can get in on the action and down them some bosses. Sadly this week, Hong his stuck clearing trash in SSC. It's bad news when the little fishes come back, trust me.

There are a number of things that drive people to raid. Character improvement is one aspect, but for most raiders that I've run across, it's all about seeing content. These are the explorer/achievers who see bosses not as just a challenge, but as a stepping stone to where even more reclusive mobs and areas exist.

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Easy Productions, the producers of Naxxramus The Movie, have finally released the epic Burning Crusade The Movie. It features the Empire Guild going through four full dungeons worth of 25-man high end raids from the Burning Crusade expansion. Apparently only 6% of WoW players can reach these areas!

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A reader who didn't leave their character name or server sent us this shot of what appears to be one skeleton looting the other on the docks in Ratchet. I'm guessing the looter used to be a Rogue, but what is he expecting to get? Any ideas?

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It's been close to three months since the exciting, change-filled Patch 2.3 hit the live servers and a lot of people seem to be waiting in anticipation for the upcoming Patch 2.4. So much speculation has gone into what other changes will be accompanying the previously announced Sunwell 25-man raid and 5-man dungeon. In fact, some have gone so far as to post a wishlist fake patch notes and details have leaked of some phat-looking epics.

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Blue posts are normally there to keep World of Warcraft players informed. One Blizzard forum member by the name of Reikor, however, has claimed that one of blue poster Bornakk's free transfer post titles is actually misinforming players.

Apparently, what Reikor thought was that Bornakk had announced a new non-transfer WoW realm, when in fact, the blue poster had announced that characters may transfer to a new realm - "new" meaning a realm they haven't played on before.

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Your friendly neighborhood mailbox has many uses. More than just sending messages to offline friends, it also doubles as a second bank. Mail a bunch of items to an alt. After 30 days it will bounce back to you if you didn't retrieve it before then. The trick is remembering what you have sent off to remote storage.

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As some of the PvP-faring players here will recall, there's an ongoing problem that affects your personal ratings in the World of Warcraft MMORPG. The problem in question sometimes causes players to be removed from the wrong arena team when they're attempting to leave a different team. This results in some players losing some of their personal ratings.

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Welcome to another update without any 2.4 information, however we do have a few interesting blue posts from the community managers and it's looking a bit more interesting than the beginning of the week.

The secrets behind the loot tables
There's always been a lot of question around this and Drysc decided to explain how everything works.
Quote from: Drysc (Source)Loot is generated upon creation. As soon as you step into an instance, or a mob is created in the world, the loot that's going to drop has already been determined.

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Having trouble getting through all those gankers in the Arthas server? Blizzard blue-texter Bornakk dropped by the World of Warcraft Forums to announce a new batch of free inter- realm character transfers ending February 7,  3:00 p.m. PST.

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As some of the PvP-faring players here will recall, there's an ongoing problem that affects your personal ratings in the World of Warcraft MMORPG. The problem in question sometimes causes players to be removed from the wrong arena team when they're attempting to leave a different team. This results in some players losing some of their personal ratings.

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Some noteworthy blue posts today, especially the first one about loot generation, there have been several urban legends to guess how loot was determined (i.e. Mr Lucky as raid leader = good drops!).

Loot generation clarified

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