Or

"I seeee you!"

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Bornakk posted a poll on the forums the other day asking what everyone's favorite April Fool's joke from Blizzard was, and surprisingly (to me, anyway -- I thought Tauren Marines would win for sure), the Molten Core Atari game is winning. There's no question that the bears joke was great (it does make sense), but I thought the game looked a little boring. Blizzard fans disagree, however -- people like the pixelated versions of the old MC bosses.

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I once wrote that Warsong Gulch was my favorite Battleground. To be quite honest, in the past couple of weeks prior to Patch 2.4, I had seriously begun to doubt that. I was grinding reputation with the Warsong Clan on my Blood Elf, and increasingly, the games became excruciatingly long and even though I often engaged in exciting combat, the protracted games would sometimes end in a 0-3 loss that would net 0 bonus Honor and 0 reputation. For many players, this is the prevailing experience. For many players, Warsong Gulch sucks. Despite how much I always enjoyed my WSG games, grinding it for reputation is a total pain. That hasn't quite changed with Patch 2.4, which still doesn't award any reputation whatsoever for losing games as opposed to Arathi Basin or Alterac Valley, but the games will no longer last for hours.

Paradigm shift
I know that Mike speculated that the changes to Warsong Gulch might not have helped, but I have a dissimilar experience. The important thing to remember is there has to be a complete change of attitude because it's no longer possible to turtle. Yeah, I know that people have been groaning about the continued turtling. They're wrong. That's because when the Focused Assault debuff is on, there's absolutely no way healers can keep up the flag carrier. In some of the games that I've participated in, players going after the flag were still concerned about the healers and wasted time burning them down or crowd controlling them. One word: don't. Ignore the healers when the debuff is on. Unless they have nine guys spamming heals on the flag carrier, it will be next to impossible to keep up a flag carrier with the debuff on, even more so with Brutal Assault. Ever tried healing through an enraged raid boss? Or maybe Gruul at 20 grows (who even lets Gruul get to 20 grows?)? It's sorta kinda of like that. Enjoy.

No more excuses
The problem with Warsong Gulch post-Patch 2.4 isn't the game design anymore. It's the players. If you're still having hours-long games with the changes, you have idiots playing on the field. That's the only explanation. There are no more excuses for long games now. 45 seconds after the flag is picked up, it can be tracked on the map. You don't need Hunters, Druids, or Priests using Mind Vision to find out where the flag is. It's right there. You know where the flag is. If your team isn't going after it, that's player error, not game design.

The early tracking and the debuff changes everything. Even if the flag is dropped -- and I've seen players try to get rid of it by passing flags or dropping it and picking it up again -- the debuff stays. In fact, if a flag is returned and the team doesn't cap, when the returned flag is picked up, the carrier will automatically have the debuff. As long as both flags are held, the debuff timer keeps on ticking. This works extremely well because some players stealthily camp the flag spawn just in case the flag is dropped. These players won't get very far because aside from the increase in damage taken, movement is also slowed.

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So yes, Frostmourne is a sweet sword, and yeah these real-life replicas are great (like a couple of thousand dollars great). But $20,000? That's how much the winning bidder put up in the Weaponmasters auction to get a limited edition low number sword, a gaggle of extra goodies, and of course the real reason someone would spend five figures on a collectible: membership in the Arthas' Army of Disciples club. That's a lot of cash.

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This week Scattered Shots comes to you barking and growling, hot on the heels of an overview about some of the cool complexity involved in being a hunter. Today we turn toward our animal half to get a look at how we can start making some of that complexity work for us.

I love hunter pets. I love thinking about pets and writing about pets, and most of all I love managing my pets. I love that yo-yo feeling you can get when you tell your pet to go do something and then it does it well, coming back to you alive and healthy.

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Living on the edge has always been a daily lifestyle for players who frequent the highly competitive PvP servers on Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Compound this with the fact that even NPCs can take out their aggressions on you for violating the fragile peace, then you have one frustrating gaming session on your hands.

A complaint on the WoW forums recently surfaced, explaining the unfairness of the Guard NPCs' AI when handling PvP outbreaks in any city. Forum poster Delathor mentioned that the devs should tone down the durability loss upon being killed by a Guard due to their behavior of arbitrarily killing anyone who begins a fight inside the city limits.

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Never let it be said that the people running World of Warcraft don't care about educating their players. Blizzard French Community representative Daghorn has announced on the WoW forums that they are running a feature on the the art of "real life" blacksmithing on the official website.

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On April Fools' Day, amongst our extensive HKO coverage, Daniel Whitcomb reported that the combat log changes introduced in Patch 2.4 were being rolled back in Patch 2.5. Slouken has since indicated that he was "just kidding", as Daniel had guessed.

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Well Fed Buff serves up tasty dishes to boost your HP, stats and appetite – with that special WoW twist, of course.

In World of Warcraft Mok'Nathal Shortribs restores 7500 health over 30 seconds. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become affected by a well-fed buff that grants you 20 Stamina and Spirit for 30 min. The real life version bears a striking resemblance to beer braised short ribs and seems to reduce stamina, but maybe that was the Guinness.

As with most tender meats, this recipe is more about patience than precision. Plan on about three and a half hours total for the completion of this dish. Since baking takes up most of the time, it's the perfect time to get a couple of Alterac Valley runs in. Read on for the recipe for this delightful dish.

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Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Matthew Rossi has decided to spend this week's column exploring the odd notions people, including up and coming shamans, sometimes get about the class. He'll admit that he was guilty of one of these himself, and looks forward to your guesses.

I was thinking I might talk about how to solo and quest as a restoration shaman. After all, there are a lot of new dailies out now and you might not have anyone online to run them with. Since elemental and enhancement are both DPS options, I thought it would be reasonable to talk about some things like putting Frostbrand or Flametongue on your weapon instead of Windfury (I always used to use Windfury with my dinky, 41 dps healing mace, and it was the wrong move) if you're soloing in your healing gear. Both frostbrand and flametongue get the benefit of 10% of your spell damage, making them better than Windfury for elemental or restoration shamans who won't be doing a lot of weapon damage - I use frostbrand on my resto shaman and would prefer it over flametongue if I were elemental, because I like to try and get back out to casting range, but flametongue can do a lot of damage on a fast weapon so a lot of elemental shamans like it better. And I definitely think I'll probably still do a column about proper soloing for the healer shaman. (Hint: your healing gear has a decent amount of spell damage now.)

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Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers.

What do you do for WoW Insider?

I write the weekly Officers' Quarters column and . . . that's about it! Officers' Quarters is an advice column for guild leaders and occasionally for their members, too. Guilds are the driving force behind all MMOs and Warcraft is no exception. No game can survive without great guilds, and it is my goal to help people create and sustain great guilds. What gives me the authority? I've been running the same guild since January of 2005 -- it's one of the oldest surviving guilds in Warcraft. I have not announced what guild I lead. Maybe someday I will, but not today.

Is my guild exceptional? In its longevity and the quality of its members, it is absolutely exceptional in my opinion. But we also struggle with many of the problems faced by casual raiding guilds: recruitment, drama, progression, and everything else. The hallmark of effective guild leadership isn't running a guild that is completely free of problems -- it's how you weather the hardships and learn from your mistakes.


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When I woke up today, I promised myself that I wouldn't practice sabotage, espionage, or anything ... "age." Therefore, I've decided to post something amazing in contrast to yesterday. Cranius, creator of the popular Big Blue Dress, has blessed us with a little musical ditty, called Darrowshire.

One of the greatest things about this machinima is that he based it around a quest in the Eastern Plaguelands. It's not every day that you can actually relive the path of a machinima. If you'd like to know what Cranius is up to next, check out his blog.

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Got a funny World of Warcraft experience or idea that's just begging to be immortalized as a comic? Blizzard has just announced the beginning of this year's round of Comic Contests, bringing with it more opportunities for fame and collectible goodies, at least for the folks who join.

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If you happen to be a resident of World of Warcraft's European servers, listen up. Blizzard community moderator Vaneras dropped by the WoW Forums earlier to announce another series of free character transfers from April 2 (Wednesday) until April 8 (Tuesday) next week.

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Before anything else, take a minute and soak yourselves in the wonderful glowing lights coming from the many crystals of the Un'goro Crater in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. It's one of the many remarkable sceneries that can definitely be enjoyed in the MMORPG.

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Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.

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Baldasarre of Mal'ganis writes us with this story: "This is a screenshot I took while vigorously scouring the floor of Terrokar Forrest in search of herbs for the elusive Nether Residue Herbalism daily quest. I flew over this little pond and noticed something I had never seen before. With no indication of it's purpose, I thought it odd that there would be a statue of an owl atop what appears either a perch, or some type of roof. I have never seen anything like this statue before in the game, nor do I know anything about its meaning/purpose/story."

As much as I'd like to suggest that this is part of a secret Bohemian Grove ritual of the arakkoa, a quick search revealed that the three separate bird statues in Terokkar are part of the druid epic flight form quest chain. This one appears to be a falcon. However, the best explaination comes from Allyeranth of Black Dragonflight, who writes, "I hear that if you play the Song of Wind in front of them, they'll offer you transportation to other parts of Draenor."

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

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Phase 3 is now upon us! According to us.gorgonnash.info, they've now just barely hit the Armory phase of the Shattered Sun Offensive. As of 9:07pm PDT, April 2nd, Cenarius is behind them at 95%, with Zul'jin behind them at 90%. Congratulations, Proudmoore.

Of course, the biggest thing this means is that they've unlocked the quest Making Ready, which will allow them to eventually unlock the new Badge of Justice loot. Good luck to them, and may the unlocking go fast! For everyone who needs to catch up to Proudmoore, be sure to check out our phase 1 and phase 2 quest walkthroughs. For all you Proudmoore inhabitants, and all the rest of you raring to go, be sure to check out our phase 3 walkthroughs for all the information you'll need to forge ahead with the offensive, and look out for the Phase 4 walkthroughs coming soon from Alex.

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More news for all you hungry Wrath of the Lich King fans out there. The test realm forum has been taken offline and is showing as undergoing a change, although we don't know what that is just yet. The exact submessage is "The forum you're trying to access is not ready." This is significant for a couple reasons.

First, the test realm forum is usually left up for a while after the patch so folks have some place to go and reference everything that was learned during the beta. I know that I've used the forum for up to a month to go and get necessary information.

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Player Amad of the Bleeding Hallow realm in World of Warcraft has posted a bug report over at the official forums for the game. According to the level 70 Warlock, the release spirit window does not come up at times leaving characters dead.

It's a good thing, however, that Blizzard community manager Hortus was patrolling the forums and saw the thread. The blue poster acknowledged the problem and provided the following explanation as well as a temporary solution:

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Nobody likes being left out, especially if an event such as the World of Warcraft Arena Tournament is at stake. Player Bbanki of Blizzard's forums spoke up on behalf of players from the Republic of Ireland, lamenting the region's exclusion from the said tournament.

The player simply wanted to know why this was the case. Most of the responses from the other Blizzard forum members didn't really answer Bbanki's question. WoW forum member IIi, however, said that the exclusion could be due to either one of two things.

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According to a rumor we picked up, there is a possibility that Blizzard's readying beta tests for World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. This bit of speculation comes from WoW's official beta test site (http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/game/character-copy.html), which had recently started working.

Or rather (according to MMO-Champion website), accessing the site now redirects users to its character copy link before hitting them with a 403 error; this indicates that the server is there, but that the user doesn't have access to it.

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Frostmourne Replica fetches $20,700 at auction closure

A few days ago, Frostmourne Replica was recently auctioned off, the winner "Xeophonix" acquired it for the sum of $20,700. Below are the four highest bids (Blizzplanet has the top 99 bidders).

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WotLK Beta very soon ?
A nice change has been made to the official site, http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com is now working ! Well it's not really working, but it's effectively redirecting people to http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/game/character-copy.html on the server. Before yesterday it was only showing a 404 error, this could be the sign of an imminent opening of beta signups and it wouldn't be the first time something like this happens, the Wrath of the Lich King website was "detected" a few days before the Blizzcon using the same method.



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Whether you enjoy participating in the Battlegrounds, go on raids with friends, or engage in casual PvP, you cannot deny that Blizzard's World of Warcraft is a fun diversion from one's everyday routine. Regardless, we at QJ.NET are pretty sure that even the most hardcore gamer has to step away from their computer once in a while.

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Over the past few days - or you probably can say, since the new World of Warcraft patch went live, we've seen a number of bugs running about in-game. Well, Disonzo of Dragonmaw from the WoW Forums noticed another one as he was doing his alt Spring cleaning. He noticed weird helm on one of his alts and, suffice to say, it's pretty weird.

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