Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, as other people continue their march through Ulduar, I continue to ask myself if it wouldn't be more cost-effective in the long run just to take my ailing graphics card out behind the woodshed and end its pathetic misery once and for all.

Greetings, fellow Druids. There have been a few changes to Ulduar of late which I haven't yet seen play out on the live realms, but most of the changes concerned are nerfs, which should have little impact on overall raid strategy apart from giving you a bit of extra breathing room. Today we're going to address what you can expect from Auriaya and Mimiron. Mimiron in particular was the subject of some concern from feral tanks on the PTR and, well, the mechanic driving that concern is still a problem, but less of one than you might think.

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A new report on MMO gold farming claims that there are about 400,000 working in China on gold farming and trading, and that there could be as many as 500,000 to even a full million. Of course there's no way to tell exactly how many people are employed in the business (and the number almost certainly doesn't stay constant for long), but according to interviews and surveys done of business there, that's the number they've come up with. They also claim a $10 billion a year turnover, however, and that number seems way high, though remember that they're talking about all MMOs, not just World of Warcraft. The report has some other interesting information about how China does gold farming: there are a number of brokerages staffed by English speakers in the larger cities that handle the actual transaction, and then the farms themselves are usually outside the cities, where cheaper labor is available. Typical pay in the farms is about $140 a month plus food and board, working in about ten hour shifts, while pay is higher in the city-based brokerages. Most employees are younger guys, who play while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, and lots of their ingame tasks are automated with custom-made and adapted software.
Very intriguing. News of the report actually came from Kevin Werbach, who, as we've reported, is not only a WoW player but acted as the FCC's transition co-chair for the Obama administration. He's doing research for a talk he's giving soon in Philadelphia called "All I really need to know I learned in World of Warcraft." And we also hear he's set to be on an upcoming episode of How I WoW, so stay tuned for that.

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Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

• Check off which buffs you want to keep up, on what classes, main hand/off hand (if applicable), and when you want it to remind you (in combat, out of combat, 10 seconds remaining, etc).
• Under the specified conditions, SmartBuff will put a reminder up on your screen (also configurable, of course) telling you who needs what buffs.
• Now simply click the SmartBuff button, or scroll your scroll wheel (if you have that option set), and the necessary buffs will magically be applied for you!

It doesn't get much easier than that. SB also supports setting up profiles, for PvP vs. raids vs. parties, for instance.

I do have a few minor gripes about SmartBuff. It would be nice if it could recognize when I was on a vehicle, and stop bugging me for buffs under those conditions. Sure, "/sb toggle" isn't hard (turns the mod off/on), but then I have to remember to toggle it back on, and remembering to buff is the reason I have SB in the first place. It doesn't do a very good job of recognizing when you've manually re-applied a buff, as I often do with Inner Fire when I have a spare moment. It also used to frequently double-buff for buffs that just recently went raid-wide (like Prayer of Shadow Protection), though that seems to be fixed in the latest version.

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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.

• Lorecrafted asks an important question: What came first, the Titans or the egg? Wait, I meant Old Gods. Titans or Old Gods.
• World of Matticus's Sydera takes a close look at healing through Freya in Ulduar. As always, a great resource for healers of all flavors.
• Sacred Duty is making the most out of Mining in Icecrown, and they're willing to show you how, too!
• The Druid Team goes where many have hoped someone would've gone before: Balance Druid spell rotations.


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However, what single buff was the biggest factor causing guilds to stack a particular class in Sunwell? Ten points if you said "Bloodlust/Heroism." And that is, irritatingly enough, one of the few remaining buffs that no other class has; if you want Bloodlust, you need a shaman, period.

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When patch 3.1 went live, Destruction warlocks (and 0/40/31s) had a lovely time smacking everything in sight with massive Conflagrates. This was promptly nerfed, for PvP purposes; the devs felt it was overpowered for 'locks to be able to do that much, that fast. However, it was acknowledged that Destro would need some PvE buffing to make up for it.

• Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 25% (at rank 5).

The first part is entirely reworked, and the second part used to only apply if your target's Immolate had 5 or fewer seconds remaining.

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Blizzcon 2009 will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 21 and 22. For those unable to make it, DirecTV is once again selling a pay-per-view package of the event for $40, which seems a bit steep for a two-day video feed, but whatever.

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15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

What does it take to bring WoW fanatics the freshest World of Warcraft news on the planet? Imagine, if you will, a guy who sleeps literally no more than three or four hours at a stretch so he won't miss any World of Warcraft news. Imagine a guy who spends hour upon hour digging through game database files searching for anything that appears remotely different. Imagine a guy who no longer raids because he's so weary from 10-hour stretches on the PTR (public test realm).

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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 Plus Heal, a new UI blog for all classes. So how about them 3.1.2 changes?

The upcoming 3.1.2 patch is introducing some minor modifications to some of our Priestly spells. I'd have to say that it's an overall net nerf to Discipline. But in all honesty, I did feel we were slightly overpowered. Yes I'd say some of these were designed to address PvP concerns. Now I don't PvP competitively but when Priest/Rogue or Priest/Anything starts to have mass appeal, I pay a bit more attention and I ask questions to the players that do arena often. It's not that I don't like to arena or hit the battlegrounds. It's always been a time factor for me (due to raiding, writing and school). PvP simply gets the short end of the stick and ends up being something I can't get involved with.

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There's some fun to be had out there with everyone's new Patron and Matron titles. And by fun I clearly mean instituting a level of confusion and raised eyebrows that only a transformative romp through the wilds of Storms Peaks can give you.

First, you want to get your title from Children's Week. And with the exception of School of Hard Knocks the title shouldn't be hard to get.

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My First Gold is a regular column dedicated to helping players level 20 and lower to start building their WoWenomic empire. Following these tips should help new players (and alts) expand their WoW wallets to afford training, trade skills and have a few gold left in their pockets. Higher-level players may find benefit in these tips as well, but every tip herein is intended to be within the capabilities of a player below the 21st level.

We are not big fans of farming (at any level)- we find it to be impractical as compared to other gold-making strategies unless you can group up several tasks at once for maximum efficiency. Today we’ll explore just such a grouping opportunity that can allow even a low-level character to make a couple of hundred gold in an hour while only having to deal with mobs lower then level 10.

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BlizzCon Tickets On Sale May 16
Quote from: Nethaera (Source)Tickets to this year's BlizzCon gaming convention, being held on August 21 and 22 in Anaheim, California, will go on sale worldwide on Saturday, May 16 for $125 each, with a second block of tickets going on sale Saturday, May 30. For those unable to attend, DIRECTV will once again be televising BlizzCon in high definition as a Pay Per View event, featuring coverage from the show floor, exclusive interviews, demos, and more. In addition, for the first time, players around the world will be able to watch the DIRECTV BlizzCon event as a Pay Per View Internet stream. Check out the press release ( http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/090505.html ) for further details, and head over to http://www.blizzcon.com on May 16 or May 30 to buy your tickets.

However, MK hasn't been seen around lately, and hasn't updated the information for patch 3.1, with its big changes to spirit and to Priest talents. Fortunately, a blogger named BobTurkey has stepped in and thoroughly reworked all the numbers, at great and interesting length. It's times like these that I really love the WoW community.

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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. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

There was a good, and amazingly civil, discussion yesterday in the comments to the Queue about which instance a tank should head to first. Most of the debate came about via my suggestion that Utgarde Pinnacle was a good candidate for a tank's first heroic. The nice thing about this game is that there is no right or wrong answer (most of the time).

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In reading the commentary on the site concerning the brouhaha surrounding Martin Fury and The Marvel Family's steamrolling of raid content, there were a lot of assertions made that left an impression on me, but the overwhelming feeling I had coming away from it was the players were treating it as a TOS issue when ultimately it's not. For obvious reasons, Blizzard doesn't spend a lot of time creating specific rules for what happens when players get ahold of items that are not officially supposed to exist. I do, however, believe it to be a moral issue.

Was Karatechop wrong to use the shirt, or just wrong past a certain point?

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Boubouille over at MMO Champion has once again been ferreting around in the patch files and he's discovered the next set of loot from Upper Deck's next TCG expansion Field of Heroes which is due out on 30th June.

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Yesterday MMO-Champion posted a few new finds in the patch files. Namely a series of "Battle-bots" which act as a mini-pet. There's not many details as to what exactly they are or what they do, but it does look like there are several abilities we'll be able to control.

Here's where it gets interesting. One bot state is blue, and one bot state is red. These blue and red colors match up pretty darn close to the Mountain Dew product that's on the horizon. Take a look after the break for side-by-side comparisons.

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It's been a little while since we've had a guild recruitment video on Moviewatch, so I was pretty happy to get a note from Horror. He told us about the Scytheguard Recruitment Video, which he'd built for his Forsaken-only roleplay guild on Sentinels.

The video's got a few good ideas behind it, and has a few things that could be improved. First, I liked Horror's idea for a voice-over. Since his guild is exclusively for the undead, starting off with that nightmarish "you can't breathe anymore" idea is a great start to roleplay. That being said, I think the opening went a little longer than needed. Anyone checking out a trailer needs fast-paced action, or they'll wander off.

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Now this is by no means the first time we've interviewed World of Warcraft's Lead Developer Tom Chilton (aka Kalgan) but we though with the recent release of Patch 3.1, this would be the perfect time to sit down with him and get the 411 on Blizzard's plans for their latest patch.

WoW Insider: Blizzard seem to be treating each major patch as more of a mini expansion, what are the reasons for this?

Tom Chilton: I would say the biggest reason is because we're always pushing ourselves to do as much as we can in every patch. We're never really satisfied with what we have in the patch versus what we didn't have. Maybe the developers get a little out of control - but in a good way as that's good for players. More than anything else we want to make sure that in a patch we have content for everyone.

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Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all MMOs, including WoW! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	Champions Online Press NDA lifts: See our impressions This last weekend, press had the opportunity to spend my time within the Champions Online beta. After playing more than I would safely recommend, I bring you my personal takeaway in an effort to get out as much crunchy information goodness on the upcoming MMO as possible.
	Five free to play MMOs that are ahead of the class Times are tough, the wallet is tight, and you still need a game to play. But what free games can you wrap your hands around that just don't suck, right? That seems to be the trouble with free to play games -- many selections all with very low quality. But the market is not as bad as you might think. There are certainly some gems out there in the free to play market, just waiting for you to wrap your hands around them and play. Finding them however, hasn't always been easy, until now.
	Massively's post-launch interview with Free Realms Free Realms has launched, the floodgates have been opened and the servers have multiplied like little fluffy bunnies. Despite a slight delay, the launch's feedback has been predominantly positive. Not only is this rare for an MMO launch these days, considering the factors, but it's also a testament to the team involved.

	EVE Evolved: Combat boosters The drug trade has been a part of EVE since the very beginning. Originally, drugs were nothing more than a trading commodity occasionally demanded by agents in low security space. The old drug trade goods still exist in EVE, a non-functional relic of years gone past. A new drug trade has taken its place - the black market for performance-enhancing combat boosters. If you want to push your ship to the absolute limit of its abilities, whether it's for PvE or PvP, you're definitely going to want to get your hands on some combat boosters.
	Massively's anniversary interview with Lineage II NCsoft's Lineage II has just celebrated its fifth anniversary earlier this week, and as we've previously reported, they've marked this occasion with a brand new expansion entitled Gracia Final. Plus, there have been in-game events, special contests and free reactivation for lapsed accounts! What else could you ever want?
	Massively speaks with EVE Online devs about Council of Stellar Management The Council of Stellar Management in the sci-fi game EVE Online is a fairly unique concept in the massively multiplayer online game industry. As an MMO matures and the number of subscribers increases by thousands of new players every year, representing very different playstyles and outlooks on how the game is evolving, there are few companies out there that would ask the players themselves to advise on how best to move forward. But this is exactly what CCP Games is doing with EVE.
	Warhammer: Where are all the gank groups? You will commonly find gank groups in many PvP games. Gank groups are simply organized, pre-made groups, usually formed by members of the same guild that work extremely well together. Usually, a gank group will destroy a pick-up group (PuG) and zerg because they employ smarter tactics, keep cooler heads, and communicate more effectively.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them 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!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Gallery: Around Azeroth

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Good morning, WoW Insider! It's maintenance day, and you know what that means: WoW Insider has shinies for you. Yes, courtesy of WoWTCGLoot.com, we have another batch of loot codes to give away to you guys today. Be warned: These codes are region locked, so they're only valid in North America. Sorry, rest of the world. We'll do what we can for you guys another time.

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Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone. We're expecting a short downtime this morning, 5 AM - 11 AM Pacific. Patch 3.1.2 probably won't go live quite yet what with the new build on the PTR, so hopefully this will be a relatively smooth downtime. As always, the downtimes is great time to catch up on the news from the past week, and there were a few good stories that broke over the past 7 days.

The biggest news was the epic tale of Karatechop. From Armory sleuthing, we discovered that he'd been one-shotting Ulduar thanks to a GM Item. Blizzard shut down his account and the accounts of most of his guild, and he talked to us about it. The debate on what he should have done rages on. Of course, if you've had your fill of Martin Fury, we have more for you to browse:Hot News and Features

• Oh yeah, that whole Children's Week thing is going on, too. You'll want this guide to the achievements. And since School of Hard Knocks is sort of annoying to everyone involved, you'll probably want this seperate guide to that achievement.
• Lowered Expectations has a pretty insightful interview with Ghostcrawler.
• Blizzard's once again given us a slight peek behind the theorycrafting curtain, this time with an explanation of Val'anyr's proc.
  
• As we mentioned, Patch 3.1.2 is on the PTR, and there are premades. There's also new Argent mounts and the Equipment Manager.
  


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I'm not in a WoW place right now. I tend to move through phases of being a casual or a hardcore player. It depends on the content available (such as a new patch) and my workload. I did most of the Noblegarden achievements but now Children's Week is here I suddenly feel burnt out. Except for a quick romp through Gun'drak with my guildies last night and a pit stop to pick up my orphans, I've been strangely distant from Azeroth.

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Recent In-Game Fixes - 05/04
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

• The NPCs just inside the front entrance of Ulduar (like a repair ogre) should no longer despawn.
• The Druid Tier 8 Nightsong Battlegear 4 piece bonus should now properly extend the length of Savage Roar.
• The Auriaya encounter has received the following changes: The range of Savage Pounce has been slightly reduced, the impact and periodic damage has been reduced in Heroic difficulty, the Guardian Swarm ability now summons 10 Swarming Guardians instead of 25 but their individual damage has been increased.
• The reflected damage done by Elder Stonebark with his Petrified Bark ability has been significantly reduced.
• In the Hodir encounter, the time to complete the hard mode has been increased to 3 minutes. (This will be applied during maintenance beginning with North America on Tuesday May 5.)
• The health of the Heart of the Deconstructor in the XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has been reduced.
• In the Thorim encounter, the Iron Ring Guard’s Whirling Trip ability will now only hit the tank.
• In the Assembly of Iron encounter, the duration of Overwhelming Power has been increased to 30 seconds in heroic mode and the amount of healing that Steelbreaker receives from Electrical Charge has been reduced to 20% of his max health.
• The first pack of trash mobs in the Conservatory of Life has been removed, one of the trash packs in the General Vezax room has been removed, all of the humanoids in General Vezax’s room are no longer immune to stuns, the Faceless Horrors will only go immune and summon Void Beasts once instead of 3 times, and the damage done when a Clockwork Sapper explodes has been significantly reduced.

MLG Announces MLG Voice
As some of you might know, Major League Gaming is the parent company of MMO-Champion and that's why I would like to talk about a new service we're launching: MLG Voice.

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