World First: Ensidia Defeats Mimiron Hard Mode

Ensidia has beaten Mimiron Hard Mode! This means that they now have all of the items required to activate Algalon the Observer on 25-player mode.

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vodka Defeats Flame Leviathan Hard Mode

vodka of US-Alterac Mountains managed to defeat Flame Leviathan on Hard Mode today, completing Heroic: Orbit-uary; the first guild to do it since the increase in difficulty that was hotfixed in on patch day.  The Flame Leviathan Hard Mode Hall of Fame has been updated.

Loot-

• Pendant of Fiery Havoc
• Constructor's Handwraps
• Iron Riveted War Helm
• Steamcaller's Totem


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Ah, it's the weekend again. We find ourselves in a unique position this week as Friday sees the close of one yearly event and the beginning of another thanks to Blizzard pushing Noblegarden back a bit. This weekend, Azeroth is going to be overrun by pesky little kids asking to be taken around town, begging for junk food, and even endangering themselves as their respective guardians show them the war part of Warcraft. On the other hand, the PTR is also up for those who want to escape prepubescent peskiness. In order of how quickly they responded, let's see what the WoW Insider team is up to this weekend:

• Dan O'Halloran - Hitting the PTR to play with premade-80s. Always wanted to noodle around with a level capped Mage and Warlock, but never had the time to level one all the way.
• Daniel Whitcomb - Being excited for Children's Week, mostly. Not only is it two extra pets for my collection, but it gives me a good excuse to get in some PvP. I do wish School of Hard Knocks didn't require you to be the actual person holding/returning/capturing the flag/node/whatever though
• Matthew Rossi - Today, I'm playing with rabbits: my bunny Herne and his bunny wife Grimalkin will be getting some out time to celebrate his being over whatever was putting him off his food. (Not eating is very serious for
  rabbits, they can die in a matter of days once they go into GI Stasis.) I may do a Naxx pug on my shaman and there's Ulduar 10 this weekend.
• Robin Torres - Orphans and alts. It's all about orphans and alts.
• Chase Christian - Ulduar 10, which will be even easier with the latest round of nerfs. I'm glad we're killing these bosses pre-nerf, because it makes the guild feel better about itself.
• Matt Low - Ulduar 10 for Matt also!
• Eliah Hecht - Naxx on my lock, Ulduar on the priest. Maybe starting to level my Mage, if I have time.
• Alex Ziebart - Thorim, Freya and Mimiron are on notice on Ulduar 25. I might try to finish leveling my Resto Shaman as well, but that probably won't happen.
• Adam Holisky - Working on some multiboxing.
• Jennie Lees - Getting my flatmate and his entire workplace infected with the WoW bug. >:)
• Michael Sacco - Yogg-Saron on Ulduar 10; Mimiron, Vezax, and Yogg on 25.
• Zach Yonzon - Arenas even though Blizzard borked the system again, Battlegrounds even though it will be overrun by children and their clueless guardians, and Ulduar even though my guild doesn't need another plate DPS.
  


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As much as Martin Fury would have been appropriate here today, we'll stick to actual player items for now. Here's a nice big scary mace to hope for from Ulduar's first boss this weekend.

Name: Ironsoul (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)
Type: Two-hand Epic Mace
Damage/Speed: 594 - 892 / 3.50 (212.3 DPS)
Attributes:

• +105 Strength, +126 Stamina
• Improves crit strike rating by 69 and armor penetration rating by 84.


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We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

It's the first of May, first of May. Everybody's happy it's the first of May. Had a little conversation with my squirrel and chipmunk friends.

• ReloaduUI has found a couple good videos on configuring Grid.
• Shields Up! has a good post about Resto Shaman add-ons.
• There's a new Sea Turtle Mount Gallery over on the official WoW website. Because you don't have one and you want to be reminded of it.
• Lodur over at World of Matticus Revisits Resto Shaman Tier 8 Gear.
• Cuppytalk looks at Gender and Sexuality in Virtual Worlds as a response to some other bloggosphere mutterings. An interesting read considering this week's debate over the sexuality of Noblegarden.


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Let's take a look at the Children's Week PvP achievement School of Hard Knocks and the resources you'll need to accomplish it.

If you want to get your Violet Proto-Drake and fly around at 310% speed, you're going to need to do this achievement. Reports are mixed on how easy or hard this achievement is. Some folks are saying it's done quickly and easily with a good group, others are banging their heads against the desk and spewing curse words at Blizzard.

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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.

A lot of people were confused about the picture I used in The Queue a couple of days ago. You know, the one with the German writing on it. That edition of The Queue was titled Mercenaries, and the person depicted in that picture was Götz von Berlichingen, a German mercenary from the early 1500s. He literally had an Iron Fist. As in, his hand was crafted out of iron. Go read up on him, he rules.

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Children's Week is here, and with it this year comes our friend Brigwyn's Child's Play auction. You can look through all of the available items in his on-site catalogue, or head on over to eBay and start bidding on whatever you like. All of the proceeds from the auction will go to help Penny Arcade's very worthy Child's Play charity, which goes to help put videogames in hospitals where sick children can play with them. Brigwyn himself has experience with their work (which he's written about over on his site), so he knows just what kind of good they can do.

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Many people have noticed a change in the Children's Week achievement Daily Chores. The achievement no longer requires you to do the same daily quest five days in a row with your orphan out, but instead requires you to do a total of any five daily quests with your orphan out.

Let me rephrase for the hard of hearing:

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Just in case you needed any more Twitter in your life (I'm getting to the point where I really don't), enter the PlayXpert Twitter widget, part of the PlayXpert gaming toolset, a free Windows application that you can download to run alongside your PC games (very similar to Xfire and that type of application). It's a little bloaty if all you want to do is run Twitter alongside WoW, but unfortunately, that functionality will never be available in an addon, as addons can't interact with any other outside sites.

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Tonight from 4:00 p.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. PDT / 9:30 p.m. PDT the Blizzard developers will be on the PTR facing off against players in Battlegrounds and in Arenas.

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Mimiron Hard Mode World first kill by Ensidia
Ensidiafinaly defeated Mimiron in Hard Mode, making them the first guild to reach Algalon in 25-Man!

• Algalon the Observer
• Hard Mode Gear List
• Hall of Fame


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We are nearing the end of Noblegarden, but haven't discussed here at WoW Insider the most controversial part of the event: Shake your Bunny-Maker. For this achievement, you have to put bunny ears on one female of each race that is over Level 18.

Before we go any farther in this discussion, I would like to state that I am female. Not that I am speaking for all females (no one can), but I think that it is important that you know where I am coming from. I also have a young daughter and would like the world to be a better place for her, as all parents do. It is also worth noting that the title for this post was inspired by one of my favorite movies: This is Spinal Tap. The band wants to release an album called Smell the Glove with a cover of a naked woman who is leashed and is forced to smell a glove. The lead singer mistakes the word "sexist" for "sexy". Hilarity ensues.

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Everyone is in a furor over the Martin Fury/Karatechop controversy -- and we've had a few requests already to poll you guys on exactly what you think about it, so here you go. The story, as we've ascertained, is that Karatechop got the item by way of a low-level guildie (who'd been receiving items after he'd had his account hacked), "didn't even contemplate a ticket," and had the guildie bring the item into normal Ulduar with him. They downed Ignis with it, and after that proceeded out of the instance, flipped it to Heroic, and used the item thirteen more times, completing even some world first hard modes with it.

So the question is: what would you have done? Lots of players say they wouldn't have touched it, and that it was clearly an item they shouldn't have had. Others say that Karatechop and his guild did what anyone would have done -- it was Blizzard's mistake and they were just taking advantage of it. We'd like to know, so here's a poll: what would you have done if Martin Fury showed up in your mailbox?

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There's a short, five-page locked thread over at the official forums that starts out by quoting Ghostcrawler although the OP doesn't quite make his point clear. I think what he's trying to say is that there's too much crowd control in the game, so much in fact, that a PvP trinket is mandatory. The discussion devolves into a criticism of the prevalance of crowd control in PvP. This is arguably exemplified by one of the most enduring and successful 3v3 team composition in Arenas, the RMP or Rogue-Mage-Priest comp which has access to a good number of crowd control (and interrupt or silence) abilities.

Ghostcrawler pops in to give his two centavos worth (apparently he can sift through QQ much better than I could) to say that "crowd control abilities are part of WoW," and is actually a little surprised at the reaction. "If you don't like being CC'd," he chides, "use your PvP trinket." He goes on to say that too much crowd control isn't good for the game, and also acknowledges that too much burst and too much healing aren't palatable, either. A little later down the thread, he gives a little illumination behind developer philosophy about crowd control design and distribution. Newsflash: it isn't equal.

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Today on Moviewatch we bring to you a different sort of Machinima, a blend of in-game artwork and scenes as the backdrop to animated characters. At first I was rather skeptical of how it all looked and if it'd work, but by about a minute into it I was digging it.

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The PTR Patch Notes for Patch 3.1.2 are out today, and we have them for you in their full glory. Everyone loves themselves some notes!

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Nivmizzit of <Reprise> on Feathermoon sends in this dispatch from the Argent Tournament: "After a long hard day earning the respect of Darnassus, Nivmizzit thought he would take a dip in the relaxing aromatherapy bath. Unfortunately, he neglected to realize that the bath is not exactly private, or a bath. He was then dragged kicking and screaming out by Argent Security."

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Information on Patch 3.1.2 is starting to trickle out, and this has already become my favorite change of the patch:

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.


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We hope you've gotten the all the necessary Achievements for Noblegarden because a new world event kicks off today. Yep, it's Children's Week once again, and just like all the yearly events this one has a bunch of Achievements you'll need to plow through in order to get the meta, and consequently the Violet Proto-Drake? Did it catch you by surprise? We hope not. The in-game calendar tells you exactly when these things start, anyway, and barring that you've got your friends over here at WoW Insider to remind you.

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The Children’s Week event starts early Saturday morning. As such, many players will be attempting to wrap up the related achievements in pursuit of their 310% speed boosting world-event mount. One of the required achievements is Bad Example, which requires you to eat certain unhealthy snacks in front of your orphan. The opportunity for profit is that two of these treats are not available from vendors and can only be crafted by WoW chefs. The Delicious Chocolate Cake and Tasty Cupcake are both crafted items and should hit a premium in price during the Children’s Week event. We expect that, while both items will show a steep rise in price, The Delicious Chocolate Cake will show the strongest increase for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the recipe is a fairly rare drop from daily cooking quests so not all chefs will have it (in fact, we hear that some people even think that ‘the cake is a lie’).

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Recent In-Game Fixes - 04/30
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)Keep in mind that some of these changes my require the realm to be restarted to take effect.

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