I love Wintergrasp. Five months into Wrath and I think it's still one of the most fun things to do in the game. Lag issues aside, I think the zone has been a great success if only by judging through the number of people on my realm who participate in every battle. The general impression that I get from forums, blogs, comments on this site, as well as fellow players is that Blizzard did a good job with Wintergrasp. It's fun, fast, and extremely rewarding -- Honor gain during one game is insane and the items you can purchase with the Wintergrasp Marks of Honor are pretty good (we'll get to that in a moment). Patch 3.1 is going to bring some improvements to the gameplay, as well, so let's take a look at those things first.

All players who attack a siege vehicle should now get credit if it is destroyed.
Previously this worked similar to tapping a mob, where the player or raid that first tapped the siege vehicle would get credit. This made it harder for multiple raids or ungrouped players to complete Stop the Siege!. This change should solve that problem neatly.

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I've received a lot of emails and requests for help regarding the heroic Razuvious encounter. It's a unique encounter in that Priests have to mind control mobs in order to to tank successfully.

Unless your guild has a team of extremely experienced and talented Mages, then having two Priests on hand is a requirement to be able to do Razuvious.

The first thing I want to emphasize here is this: You don't need hit gear to do the encounter if you're a Priest on Mind Control duty.

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Funny Money is a new weekly column published at the end of the week with the intent to have a little fun with the world of finance. Every weekend we’ll bring you a financial quote, a song relating to money, something interesting from the real world of business and a quick WoW gold making tip. Read on and have some fun…

Money Quote

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All of you achievement fiends better be prepared for the end of April through early May. It was reported earlier that Noblegarden was being delayed until patch 3.1 was ready, and we have a new date for it according to the latest PTR build. While it could change again, the current date listed for the holiday is April 26th and it will last until May 2nd.

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As WoW Insider's self-proclaimed junior lieutenant Lore Nerd, when Simon & Schuster so generously offered to send us a couple of free advanced copies of Arthas, the new World of Warcraft book by Christie Golden, I was all over that. As soon as the book showed up on my doorstep, I turned on the answering machine, grabbed a soda, popped some popcorn, curled up in my favorite chair, and pretty much read the whole thing straight through. The only breaks I took were to discuss various scenes and their ramifications for lore with Alex. And by discuss, I mean "fanboy out."

But I am being completely serious when I say, of all the manga, comic books, and novels I have read, Arthas has the most solid, balanced writing and best realized characters. It's not a perfect book, but it's a very worthwhile read for anyone who has even the slightest interest in the why and how of that big armored dude up on the Frozen Throne.

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Earlier this week, we discussed the state of the Engineering profession. Most notably it seems that while Blizzard is currently happy with Engineering and has no near-future plans to make any hefty changes, many Engies in the community are as frustrated as ever.

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Website Update - Patch 3.1 Items
Most of the boss pages have been updated to the latest build, Algalon the Observer was also updated with a few abilities. A new category has been added, the items! For the moment you will only find the Tier 8 Sets, Ulduar and PvP loot lists, but I'm working on a few more additions to this list.





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NoObz is still on holiday, but Ding! has been updated. In other news, Disgraph has a new new site, because the new one liked to take a lot of naps. While everyone loves naps, they are not for websites. I have to say, I am loving the new design, although the text is a bit more difficult to read.

• Cru the Dwarf celebrates its first year!
• Dark Legacy Comics: Luck?
• Experience Points has two new WoW-related comics, and while one involves Twitter, the other is another Dear Diary.
• On Flintlocke vs the Horde, the battle over the owl and the bunny continues to rage.
• GU Comics: Burning a Hole and Sorn Motors.
• LFG: Richard has left for awhile, and his absence is being felt.
• Haxxed! Noobcow is a Stranger in a Strange Land.
• Kissybear is feeling a little out of his element too. Good thing he's starting the all new Panda Attack!
• Massive Pwnage: Achievement.
• NPC: Motivation. I completely agree with the sentiment expressed here. Alas.
• Teh Glads: They Are Finally United.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Plots are Over Rated. As a bonus, mouseover the image and read the alternative text.
• World of Warcraft, eh? 'Bulls'-Eye.


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Some people sit around and paint pictures of the stars. Some people catalogue and study them with telescopes. And still others take money from gullible people by pretending that the positioning of the stars can tell you whether today is a good day to try sushi, or another such trivial matter. Kamidesu of <Elders> on Stormrage-EU has decided to show her appreciation for the stars by joining them, skydiving to her presumed death in Storm Peaks.

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But what if, Alex posited, Deadmines had a heroic mode? And what if this heroic mode unlocked a story line? Sure, Van Cleef's dead, but in Heroic Deadmines, the Bloodsail have taken over. There could, of course, be similar ideas all down the line. Sure, you've cleared Scholomance of the Scourge, but now the Twilight's Hammer has moved in, and are working at summoning a massive corrupted water elementals from the impure waters of Darrowmere. You could even change the geography of the dungeon a bit for even more new ideas. Maybe assume that the new occupants did some "redecorating." Imagine the previous Scholomance idea, for example, end with the walls of Scholomance being busted open while a massive humanoid water elemental reaches in to try to slay your party.

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A quick mention of site updates / fixes.

• The "Post Your Comment" link now sends you directly to the submission form to reply to the news thread.
• Clicking "View Thread" will take you to the news thread itself so you can read other replies.
• The Blue Tracker was displaying the initial post on the page of a first blue post as the original post (that started the thread).  This is now fixed so that post #1 will always display as the original post on the tracker.

Week In Review - March 29th to April 4th

There's been a decent bit of activity this week, including two PTR builds, so I wanted to recap the major news for anyone who may have missed something.

• March 29th: Jeffrey "Tigole" Kaplan at GDC - The Cruise Director of Azeroth
• March 30th: Tier 8 Armor Guide Updates
• March 30th: Blizzard Europe Operation Changes
• March 30th: PTR Build 9742
• March 31st: Hodir Hard Mode Testing
• April 1st: General Vezax Hard Mode Testing
• April 1st: Iron Council Hard Mode Testing
• April 1st: April Fools Jokes - Some of the better April Fools jokes from this year!
  • World of Raids: 3.2 Leaked Info - Caverns of Time: The Damaged Portal
  • Curse.com: New Blizzard MMO Announced At Game Developers Conference!
  • World of Warcraft: DanceBattle System
  • World of Warcraft Europe: P1mp My Mount
  • Diablo III: The Archivist Class
  • StarCraft II: New Terra-Tron Unit
  • WoW Interface: More Upcoming 3.1 AddOn Changes
  • Google: CADIE Awakens
  • Google: Introducing Google Chrome with 3D
  • Google: Gmail Autopilot by CADIE (Oh how I wish this was real)
  • YouTube: New Viewing Experience
• April 2nd: Noblegarden Rescheduled to April 26th
• April 2nd: FileFront Avoids Shutdown
• April 3rd: PTR Build 9757
• April 3rd: New General Vezax Loot, Out of Mana Podcast
• April 4th: Equipment Manager Delayed, Arena Tournament Phase 3 Ending, WoW Comic Contest Relaunches

Obviously I can't recap all of the great April Fools jokes from around the web (and the world), so if you found one that was cool and you'd like to share it, feel free to post it as a comment!

Blue Posts

3.1 this Tuesday? (Source)

Not quite there yet.

Blizzard's New MMO (Source)

1) We haven't announced anything on the new project. We probably won't for awhile.

2) Kalgan is still here on WoW. We discuss the game design every single day. He is behind all of the changes we make.

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