The Care and Feeding of Warriors continues looking at gear and class design this week with a discussion of DPS warriors itemization and how they interact with encounters. Matthew Rossi has had a lot of time to think about this stuff since he switched back to tanking.

If you've been looking over the itemization on Icecrown Citadel gear you may, like me, have noticed that some of the items that one could conceivably acquire are itemized more straightforwardly. We'll use Shadow's Edge, the precursor to Shadowmourne, as an example. If Shadowmourne didn't exist, people would look at this weapon with its 3.7 speed, two red sockets, ArP and Crit Strike rating and massive native strength and would be going ape over it. It's difficult to get, but I expect every single serious DPS warrior, be he arms or fury, will at least do the chain for Shadow's Edge if there's any way he or she can do so. Of course, the face that you will need to beat two bosses in 25 man difficulty and then get 25 of the IC equivalent to Crusader Orbs indicates that not every serious DPS warrior (especially not serious DPS warriors who exclusively run 10 mans) will be able to do so. Furthermore, with Icecrown progressing via gates it will be a few weeks before you even get the chance to kill these two bosses, meaning that you're not going to see a Shadow's Edge (much less a Shadowmourne) on your server within days of IC going live.

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World of Warcraft's 5th Anniversary
World of Warcraft was released on November 24, 2005 and today was the beginning of the 5th anniversary in-game. Anyone logging in game during the next few days will get the WoW's 5th Anniversary achievement and a cute Onyxian Whelpling!

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Following up on their neat entry for Ulduar, Blizzard has released their newest Bosstiary, this time for The Frozen Halls, the collection of new Icecrown 5-man dungeons coming with Patch 3.3. The site serves as an encyclopedia of information on the many and varied bosses of the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection.

The Bosstiaries often have information that the dungeons never really give you; for example, who knew that Auriaya was the Titans' librarian? Nobody, that's who. We just wondered why the heck she was wandering around Ulduar with a bunch of cats and a bad attitude. But now you can go into the Frozen Halls and know exactly who you're fighting and why, replete with marks on the map indicating the position of the bosses and the instance entrance.

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The celebrations have started in Europe and Oceania, anyway! Players in these regions have started to receive their Onyxian Whelps in the mail, along with a letter welcoming them to a new year in Azeroth and a feat of strength upon logging in. This probably means that those of us in the United States (and Canada and whatever other magical lands are in the region) will be getting ours tomorrow. Considering Pilgrim's Bounty also starts tomorrow, it's kind of exciting! It really is a holiday in Azeroth.

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Continuing Blizzard's slow PR trickle of Patch 3.3 news, they just released an interview with Lead World Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Systems Designer Greg Street, a.k.a. Ghostcrawler, about the philosophy behind the design of the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon.

There's a lot of great information in there. Where itemization is concerned, they explain that the multitude of bosses in the instance (especially compared to the ghost town that was Crusader's Coliseum) affords the developers the opportunity to really serve players with specific specs and make sure that each boss has a loot table with an item of interest for every raider in attendance. They also talk at length about some popular concepts they've brought back for the sake of keeping things fun and interesting -- like the return of weapon procs, something we've rarely seen since the vanilla endgame. Ghostcrawler says that the main theme of Icecrown's gear is "Epic. Cool things. Proc'y stuff." Sounds good to me.

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I touched on Blizzard's presence at IgroMir 2009, sort of the Russian E3, a bit previously, specifically about J. Allen Brack's panel regarding guild progression and leveling in Cataclysm. Of course, I had to Google-translate the panel from Russian (nyet, I do not know Russian, comrades), and not everything Blizzard-related from the whole convention was in the recaps I read.

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It seems like every Wrath patch brings with it more items than the last by an order of magnitude. It was eight hundred of 'em for 3.1, between the Argent Tournament and Ulduar, and now Ghostcrawler says that 1400 more PvE items will be packed in every box of Patch 3.3, including our big orange buddy up there.

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Zach is a huge fan of the Battlegrounds. He loves those instanced mini-games where you bash other players' faces in almost as much as he loves Pringles Screamin' Dill Pickle. That's a lot of love right there. So much love, in fact, that he writes these weekly Battleground and world PvP columns just for you (and also because he greatly fears the lolcat hell controlled by his bosses).

Alright, newbies, it's time for today's Battlegrounds primer -- Alterac Valley. This huge, 40-player-per-side Battleground was an ambitious project by Blizzard intended to give players a sense of epic battles. In it's original iteration, Alterac Valley had more NPCs roaming the battlefield, including a massive troll in the Field of Strife who has since packed his bags "for greener pastures". Those greener pastures turned out to be Zul'drak in Northrend, as Korrak the Bloodrager shows up in the Ampitheater of Anguish as the penultimate boss. It's a sweet nod to old school players, and his yells never fail to tickle my old, nostalgic bones.

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It's turkey time (otherwise known as Pilgrim's Bounty) in the World of Warcraft starting this weekend (so keep your eyes peeled for festivities Sunday morning and onward) -- and starting next week (at least if you live in the US), in real life as well. But for this weekend, at least, it's time for all of us to jump in game and have a little fun before the stress of holidays, relatives, and just-how-long-does-it-take-to-cook-a-turkey-anyway? is upon us. So what is the WoW.com team doing before heading /afk for the holiday? Playing Torchlight and Dragon Age World of Warcraft, of course! For more on what we're playing -- and to let us know what you're up to in-game this weekend -- read on.

• Adam Holisky: DA:O still.
• Alex Ziebart: Finally finished Dragon Age, so it's old and busted now. Dragon Age? More like Disco Age, right? Right? So I'm playing Left 4 Dead 2 instead. Multiplayer zombie killing always rules.
• C. Christian Moore: Just gearing up the paladin a bit. That's about it, really.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): I have been poking around with the Torchlight demo, and we're going to shoot for Yogg+1 to get our Ulduar drakes this weekend!
• Christian Belt (@ihatewarlocks): More Torchlight! Also, Retro Game Challenge for the DS. If you grew up playing video games in the late-80's/early-90's, you owe it to yourself to purchase and play that game. It captures the experience of gaming in that era perfectly, from the simple challenge of the games right down to the secrets and cheat-codes in gaming mags. Also, if more folks buy it, maybe somebody will publish the much-improved and fantastic-looking sequel over here. So get going!
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): Nothing! I'll actually be heading home for the week of Thanksgiving to visit my family. I am sort of sulky that I will miss Pilgrim's Bounty, but I will console myself with a genuine RL Thanksgiving Feast and tickets to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. And I guess spending time with my family after not having seen them for half a year. I suppose that counts too.
• Dominic Hobbs (@DMZduffry): Raiding on the lock and gearing my fresh 80 disc.
• Eddie Carrington (@Brigwyn): Right now it's starting to look like it's going to be a quiet one. I should be getting my way out of the worgen-infested Grizzly Hills. (Oh wait. Hope I didn't just slip and talk about a spoiler...)
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Workin' on comics and questing in the Borean Tundra. The Taunka are now my new best friends. :3 That's...really about it. ^_^; Maybe some Torchlight or Dragon Age if I'm lucky.
• Lisa Poisso (@emused): Gonna order a pizza tonight and eat in front of the TV (a real rarity at this house!) and then do some retro raiding with my husband and son. ZG the other night was soooo sweet; so many memories of our wee baby guild tearing it up back in the day in our Dire Maul blues. My husband's pulling for the BRD/Strat/Scholo/UBRS combo tonight, but I'm pulling for AQ 20/40 ... Then log on our level 30s and shred us some Hillsbrad – yes, both the NPCs and the PCs ... Delicioso!
• Michael Sacco (@mikesacco): Leveling Fairwind, my new paladin alt. Catching up with old high school friends. Seething over my defeat at the hands of country-western music at the karaoke finals.
• Mike Schramm (@mikeschramm): Still leveling the paladin. He's 78, hoping to hit 80 this weekend and then start grinding out mats so I can get to da chopper.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): I'll be checking out the Pilgrim's Bounty event, but mostly I'll be coloring with my daughter and running the first family Champions game. No, not the MMO, but the pencil, paper and dice game. I have an ancient 4th edition book, GM screen, hex map, cardboard standups and a whole lotta six sided dice. I started planning this the moment The Spawn announced that Iron Man asked her to join the Super Hero Squad and that she wanted to be super strong and fly. *happy geekmom sigh*
• Zach Yonzon (@battlemasters): It seems that our guild is being resuscitated, and I'm excited to play again. Aside from warming up for another run at the game, I'm going for an actual run for the Men's Health Urbanathlon on Sunday. I'm thinking playing WoW might be a wee bit easier...


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Our podcast (which, if you haven't heard, is award-nominated now -- please give us your vote every day until the end of November) returns to the series of tubes this afternoon on Ustream, and the great Michael "Belfaire" Sacco is coming along with it. Turpster, Sacco and I will chat about night elf mohawks, and what's up with the patch 3.3 PTR (including how to get the gear and some axe that people might like) and the next expansion. And as usual we'll chat live with the chat channel, answer your emails, and just generally have a good time talking about the World of Warcraft.

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Kensaij of <Modan Co> on Moon Guard wrote in in praise of a local guild's recent anniversary event. "I know that Moon Guard has a somewhat bad name, both amongst RPers and PvP/PvE-ers who don't RP," he writes. "But there is one guild who face the tides of griefers without fear, who show that good roleplaying is NOT dead: The Knights of Menethil. A guild of Death Knights who are not your cliché angsty villians, but dead heroes that still triumph, who press on while the living mourn their fallen brothers."

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This was a reader suggestion, and a good one: Zvonimir wants to know how many of us WoW players use a Mac to play the game. Blizzard has steadfastly put out Mac and Windows versions of all their games ever since the original Warcraft, but this is not at all the norm in the industry. There are only a few other major MMOs I can think of that even have official Mac versions (EVE, Warhammer, City of Heroes, um...anything else?). Sure, we can always run some sort of virtualization (like Crossover Games, which supports WoW on Linux) or Boot Camp, but that's just less awesome than running something in your regular OS.

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Patch 3.3 Release Date
A couple of people linked me the following post from the tech support forum.
Quote from: Datth (Source)We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we're not really worried about your speed.
Apparently, we have 1 month+ to download the patch on the background downloader before it hits the live servers ... And since a lot of people asked my opinion about that, I'll try to provide you with a decent answer. To be honest I doubt this information is true, most of the items are now implemented, the heroic modes are here, and new builds do not really add any new content. Blizzard already posted about pretty much everything (even Shadowmourne).

Actually the only "missing" parts of the patch are the Season 8 Armor Sets (the weapon models are here) and the end of the Icecrown Citadel storyline.

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