Here’s the deal. I’m breaking it here first because … because I love you guys, why else? You’ve followed me from Windfury Crits to Big Hit Box and to WoW.com.

Eyonix made a very big and very good post on the official forums today titled: Cataclysm Stat & System Changes. In the post he provides a lot more detail on the stat changes we will see in Cataclysm. A lot of the information is a rehash of what we heard at Blizzcon and on the forums over the past few months, but there is also quite a bit of new information that we need to ponder

M uggle though I am, I still have need of a time-shifting necklace.? Do you ever just go through one of those streaks where time doesn’t seem to agree with you?? It’s agonizingly slow when you’re away from everything you could possibly do, but then it speeds by like a racing freight train when you actually try to get stuff done.? Despite the dangers of the fabled necklace from Harry Potter, I’m fairly certain that I would not run into myself either, thereby making my head essplode or go bonkers.? I’ve just been all over the place this last week.? Even gaming wise.? Especially gaming wise.? So here’s the cliff notes version with some random bits of insight thrown in for spice.? I promise it’s not just a Weekend Update.? Maybe. Due to everything getting rescheduled and the weekly quest being ICC, I didn’t raid this week.? At all.? Normally I’m a three day per week raider (short nights, mind you, but nights all the same).? Tonight we hit ICC up again from scratch to get the weekly knocked out.? Monday has become our day.? I’m excited, but it means that I have zero raid information to talk about.? I’m going to try using my ‘lock portal on the gunship battle.? It might be cool. We’ve been doing RL house hunting, which is kind of like grinding for rep in an alternating busy/not busy area.? Sometimes stuff’s being snatched up as quick as you look at it.? Other times it’s been on the market for 3 years.? Go figure.? I wish the tag system in houses were more like WoW (first caster wins) and less like Aion (most damage wins).? We’re first time home buyers though, so what the bleep do we know?? In any case, it has nothing to do with gaming except that as a gamer, the Loft/Office is a big selling point for us.? If that shit can’t fit two computers and will have heat issues or looks like a shoebox, we’re not buying.? Anyone else have gaming impact their RL purchasing like that?

Changes in this patch for us: Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same. Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage. Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value.

World of Warcraft has its ups and downs, which are to some extent reflected in activity numbers, but are mostly visible to people playing the game and noticing servers being full, “additional instances cannot be launched” messages, and activity on the auction house. By this anecdotal evidence I’d say that WoW is in one of its “ups”, easily explained by the extreme popularity of the Dungeon Finder

A reader suggested I turn this into a separate discussion thread, which is an excellent idea. I was talking about my T9-geared protection warrior with 35k health unbuffed having problem getting into a raid

Via MMO-Champion I found this highly interesting quote from Ghostcrawler , in which he explains why we all just AoE in heroics nowadays. Long-term, the paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good, especially given how simple it is. To be honest, we have very mixed feelings on the whole AE tanking game

Various people are once again discussing the difficulty (or lack thereof) of WoW.

Various people are once again discussing the difficulty (or lack thereof) of WoW. I don’t really understand the fascination with this topic. Here’s a some cold, hard truths: 1.

I’ve had several pleas from the various far flung corners of the internet for help, regarding fire PvP.

Character roleplay tends to be rooted in fundamental human emotions. Rage, fear, friendship, curiousity, and hope are all well within the spectrum of your character’s feelings.

Heroic Instance Nerfs Coming Soon I’m creating a separate news for this since it seems like it could be a fairly major topic on its own.? Most of these “nerfs” seem like changes to things players find annoying in the Wrath of the Lich King heroics.? What are some of the annoying things you’d like to see changed/removed?

Heroic Instance Nerfs Coming Soon I’m creating a separate news for this since it seems like it could be a fairly major topic on its own.? Most of these “nerfs” seem like changes to things players find annoying in the Wrath of the Lich King heroics.? What are some of the annoying things you’d like to see changed/removed? Quote from: Zarhym ( Source ) Ahn’kahet, the Old Kingdom With that said, we plan on making some changes to The Old Kingdom in the next minor patch.

Update Recent In-Game Fixes – 01/11 Quote from: Bornakk ( Source ) Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted. To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1 01/11/10 Professor Putricide’s Tear Gas will no longer remove player auras

Gordon, from We Fly Spitfires , recently wrote a controversial guest post on World of Matticus, Tanks and Healers Should Get The Biggest Rewards . I think a lot of the controversy comes there are several issues entangled together in this piece

Warning: This article contains spoilers. I would, however, appreciate if you did not spoil anything beyond the point of the game that I discuss

T he night before last, we finally finished the Quel’Delar quest chain. The hardest part, as expected, what knocking out each of the new heroics

This is a guest post from We Fly Spitfires .

Looking back on what my 2009 was like.

EDIT: Apparently this post is nearly identical to one posted by Rilgon over at SES. So… you can read that one instead and basically get the exact same message