WoW Insider

The Armory was updated with achievement and statistic tracking last week to accompany the new game features introducted in patch 3.0.2, along with tools to compare your achievements and stats to other players on your realm. There was a lot of concern over someone the things displayed out in the open for all to see such as the Wealth stat. How much gold you've had, how much you have, things like that. Players felt it made them into targets of sorts, figuring hackers, scammers and phishing sites would focus fire a little more. Heck, some people were just plain uncomfortable with other players seeing their gold stores.

It looks like Blizzard actually agrees in this case. If they don't agree, at least they were feeling a little sympathy and wanted to calm some nerves. The Wealth category has been removed completely, and while you can still check up on other achievements and stats, you don't get a free look into someone's money bags anymore. I don't know that how much gold you have on display actually had an effect on who scammers target or not, but it's not like it was important information anyway and you might as well be more safe than sorry. Some stats are fun to see and compare, but I don't know that gold is one of those stats.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Account Security

Previously you could only have 40 debuffs up on a single mob. That might seem like a lot, but when you got in a raid with 25 other people all putting up their own set of debuffs and dots, etc... things tended to get a little full.

Daelo, the Lead Encounter Designer, announced today that the debuff limit has been removed*. This is a subtle yet important change for many raiding guilds.

He notes that the default UI won't normally be able to show all the debuffs, but that's just a bug in the UI. The debuffs are still there and working. We don't have any verifiable information yet as to if custom mods can display an infinite number of debuffs.

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Filed under: Patches, News items, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

What classes do Blizzard employees play?

This is an often asked question by people on the forums. Sometimes it comes with a finger pointing at such and such a developer or community manager, accusing them of favoritism for a given class because it's the one they play the most.

Over the past few days we've seen two blue responses over this issue. Vaneras over on the European forums makes note to say that the GMs play the game just as "everybody else does." They encompass all classes and all play styles.

This is interesting in that it shows that Blizzard folks are involved in both casual and hard core raiding, and casual and hard core PvPing. I find this particularly interesting, since after a long day of work at WoW Insider sometimes the last thing I want to do is sit down and trudge through some raid content. But then again, sometimes I do.

Ghostcrawler also weighed in on the issue a few days earlier, making several interesting points.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Classes

Blizzplanet (with a shiny new design) reports that the big Child's Play auction this year is going to feature a special prize from Blizzard: a bronze statue of the Wolfrider that was given out to Blizzard employees. Child's Play, as you may know, was started by the guys over at the Penny Arcade webcomic, and collects money every year to purchase videogames for sick children in hospitals all over the country to play. Their annual dinner auction in Seattle is always a huge event (and Tycho and Gabe are always there), but there are also lots of other local events going on, including one here in Chicago that I'm going to be attending for WoW Insider, where we'll give away some Warcraft stuff from friends of ours like Swagdog.

If you happen to be in Seattle, though, and have some money to spend on a Wolfrider statue, this could be an awesome collectible. As we said, they were previously only handed out to Blizzard employees (though a few have leaked out to the public already), and there is a much larger version that will be installed outside Blizzard headquarters (I believe they have another copy in the lobby already).

Very cool piece of art that will be auctioned off for a very good cause. The auction's going to be held on December 9th -- seats are $125, and of course the statue will go to the highest bidder of the night. We'll keep an eye out to see what it eventually sells for -- our guess is not cheap.

Filed under: Items, Fan stuff, Blizzard, Contests, Making money

Quick! Utaik needs your help! Gather eight of the Kaskala Supplies for him or the families of the Kalu'ak town Unu'pe will starve.

This daily quest is simple yet surprisingly annoying. It's one of those that can quickly get under your skin as more and more people do it. Want to run around pickup objects while ten other people on your server do it at the same time? Then this quest is for you!

Quest Giver: Utaik, Kaskala, Borean Tundra
Reputation: Kalu'ak
Reward: 500 rep & 4.86g at level 80
Minimum Level: 68
Required Chain: None!

Read on after the break for our walkthrough of the quest, complete with a few tricks you can do to get it done quickly and easily.

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Filed under: Quests, Factions, Guides, Making money

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.

It's Wednesday, which I've determined is the worst day of the week ever, so let's skip any delays today and jump right into the Q&A. If you disagree that Wednesday is the worst, you are wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. As wrong as you could possibly be. Just sayin'.

Robsato asked...

I recently got my warrior to level 71 and I really miss my riding crop especially since my main is a pally going at normal speed feels really slow. Is there a way to get my 10% speed increase back?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue

I swear I came up with this idea yesterday -- my hard drive has been having problems with World of Warcraft, and the thought occurred to me to buy an external USB hard drive and get WoW and all of my addons loaded on it. That way, I could not only avoid the errors on my current hard drive, but I could also take my installation with me whereever I went. I wasn't sure it would work (and after a few repairs and a reinstallation, I appear to have WoW working again), so I haven't followed it up.

But a company called Transcend was way ahead of me. In Asia, they're selling a hard drive preloaded with a working Wrath installation on it. So all you need to do to play Warcraft on any computer with a USB hookup is plug in and run. You'd likely have to adjust the graphics settings depending on which computer you plugged into, but it's a great idea. Available sizes run from 160gb to 500gb, so I'd assume as well that you can use the rest of the drive as normal.

It looks official as well, but you never know -- it could be the The9, the company that runs Warcraft in Asia, has approved it, or Transcend could just be doing this on their own. Either way, this wouldn't be too hard to make yourself here in the states -- buy an HD, install WoW, and there you go.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King, Hardware

I don't know if we've mentioned this before, but even if we have, it's interesting enough to put out there again, I think. There is a dragon in the expansion that can be soloed, and drops a epic flying mount at 100% drop rate -- all you've got to do is find him. A few people have already nabbed the mount, and lots more are on the hunt right now. The mob in question is the Time-Lost Proto Drake: it's a rare elite spawn (but as I said, it's possible to solo it, especially at level 80) that shows up every six hours or so flying around the Storm Peaks. Unfortunately, none of the usual suspects have maps of where he's been seen yet, but we're hearing it's around the southern part of the zone. When he goes down, he'll drop the mount, a good chunk of gold, some Frostweave, and a random enchantment Talisman.

An interesting tactic on Blizzard's part -- on the one hand, this is definitely a big change from the huge questlines and rep grind from the netherdrakes: just kill this one dragon and you're guaranteed the mount. On the other hand, the rare spawn rate, and the fact that it is a 100% drop rate means there'll be a lot of competition, at first anyway, for the kill. But the good news is that the odds will only get better -- if you're willing to do some dragon hunting for a few hours and have some keen eyes for what's in the air, you could pick up one of the coolest flying mounts yet.

Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Expansions, Mounts, Wrath of the Lich King

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we'll be talking about Heroic gear available in Northrend.

So, I have been hearing that many of you have put in the time and effort to level your Rogues to 80. Congratulations to all of you who have the perseverance and dedication to stick it out and focus on the goal! You do us Rogues proud. It takes a special kind of player to pull those all-nighters on the road to Icecrown. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those players.

I've been leveling casually through Northrend, exhausting every single quest in a given zone before moving on to the next. In addition, I've been focusing on leveling my tradeskills to 450 and also helping my friends and family as they quest as well, with a little bit of World PvP mixed in when the opportunity presents itself.

However, that hasn't stopped me from looking ahead at all of the "badge reward" gear available for us in Dalaran. I guess we should start calling it "emblem gear" or something, but it just doesn't roll of the tongue. Whatever you call it, I've compiled a list of the 5/10 man loot that is of interest to us subtle shadows. Read on for the details.

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Filed under: Rogue, Items, Features, Guides, (Rogue) Encrypted Text, Wrath of the Lich King

We're not quite sure who Smudo and Thomas D are either, but apparently they're big in Germany, as part of a hip-hop group called Die Fantastischen Vier (or "The Fantastic Four"). And now they're starring in two new German Warcraft ads, the first we've seen starring more than one celebrity. Smudo plays a Night Elf Rogue, and Thomas D plays an Orc Warrior, and in both the ad above and one the one after the break, they get the jump on each other -- Smudo lays down a mean sap, and Thomas D brings the full fury of the Horde to bear. Interesting that Blizzard is using PvP ganking to sell the game, but maybe that's a German thing.

My Deutsch is rusty, but you can pull a few things out of there -- when Thomas D is sapped, he says "ich ben ein krieger," which means "I am a Warrior," Schurke means Rogue, and of course right before the tag, as with all of the other commercials they are saying, "What's your game?" Blizzard's ingame animation department just keeps getting better, too. I really, really want those glasses for my Orc. Really.

Thanks, Thomas!

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Filed under: Rogue, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Quests, Humor