The sex education class in Meaning of Life is pretty priceless. The status is not quo…

Original post by Karl B.

Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Arena

Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft 3v3 Arenas are part of the new College Gaming League, the first official amateur league partner of the Championship Gaming Series. The Dell-spearheaded venture works with Intel and Microsoft to offer educational discounts and PC bundles for students, faculty and staff at numerous partner schools all by the United States. Students and faculty at Dell University partner schools can register and receive benefits like special offers on games and systems, access to public game servers, and compete in tournaments.

Among the tournaments — which include Xbox 360 and PC games — is the World of Warcraft 3v3 Arena competition. Registration began last August 21 and closes on September 11, while the official matches span from September 15 to October 5. Loot up for grabs are three Alienware m15x notebooks as Grand Prizes, three Microsoft Zune players as First Prizes, and three $50 Dell gift cards for the runners-up. It’s an underwhelming selection past the Grand Prizes, to be certain, but registration is free and members can participate in other tournaments with a host of other prizes to be won. Initiatives like these certainly give students something to while away their duration… after they’ve submitted those term papers, of course.

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Original post by Zach Yonzon

We are currently aware of players experiencing difficulties with logging into positive realms on the Rampage, Ruin, Shadowburn, and Vindication battlegroups. We apologize for the inconveniences that these issues are causing, and we are working to resolve these as soon as possible. Thank you! VehldaneSenior Game MasterBlizzard Entertainment

Original post by Karl B.

As part of analyzing our new Achievements system, we will be wiping Achievements for all beta characters during the beta realm maintenance today. When the next update launches a number of achievements will show up on characters again but many achievements will not be saved and will have to be redone to show up as completed.We are very excited about p..

Original post by Karl B.

Your character’s soul will be sent into the Twisting Nether and shattered into the far corners of the universe never to unite once again.Or possibly you’d just be auto-hearthed, possibly.

Original post by Karl B.

Jimmythenumbers on the Wrath of the Lich King Beta forum has given us some more insight to the changes they will be making to raid stacking, buffs and…

Original post by Karl B.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King

Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week (except for last week, sorry guys!) Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us! Or, whether you have a question for our sister column Ask a Lore Nerd, e-mail us those, too!

Did you know that Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms were actually separated by a stray swing of High Overlord Saurfang’s axe? Did you know giraffes are just zhevras that were on the receiving end of a Saurfang Uppercut? Did you know that Saurfang doesn’t have a face beneath his mask, just another axe? Overlord Saurfang is only afraid of one thing… Mrs. Saurfang.

Okay, I’m sorry, none of that was true except for possibly that last one. It was just as obnoxious to type out as it was to read, trust me. (Un)fortunately, it’s a pretty good introduction to Saurfang, as he somehow evolved into a fan favorite poor ass by the last few years while his Alliance counterpart remained a Blizzard Employee ego stroke. It took me awhile to buy into the hype around that guy, but he’s been winning me by as of late.

Continue reading Know Your Lore: High Overlord Saurfang

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Original post by Alex Ziebart

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, AddOns, Arena

Gnomewarrior, a site devoted to tracking Arena matches, has a growing database of by 23,000 Arena matches contributed by by 400 players. It’s a pretty small player sampling right now, but the match notes that the site shows are pretty interesting. Even with a small overview, visitors can check out specific Arena teams (that have contributed their data) and details on their matches such as match duration, their Team Rating, the maps they fought on, and the all-important team compositions. Mousing by a class icon will show that player’s spec, which is extremely useful.

Arena enthusiasts looking to contribute should download ArenaHistorian from WoW Interface and upload their details on Gnomewarrior. The mod itself tracks pretty much everything in an Arena match such as the “exact race, gender, talents, healing and damage done for both the enemy arena team and yours, along with which map it was in, how towering it took and whether you won or lost.” It’s a lot of notes, and as with all databases, the more notes you’ve got, the better. Gnomewarrior collects all that info and makes it extremely searchable, allowing visitors to search for how teams or even how convinced class / specs performed.

Perhaps we’ll see tools that will parse the notes, like finding out the average duration for matches depending on the brackets and maps (glossing by the lists, for example, it looks like most matches last from 3-6 minutes). It’s plus interesting to see how positive — sometimes oddball — comps do against others. As it is now, it’s interesting ample to browse through and visualize the tons of matches they display. With a big adequate sampling, I’m looking forward to Gnomewarrior working alongside other sites like Realm History’s Arena Statistics in becoming a valuable resource for analyzing Arena play.

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Original post by Zach Yonzon

The general view is supply more advances in features and not do a graphics overall. For example there will be options for more detailed shadows, detailed terrain textures, and farther viewing distance. We are still collecting a lot of feedback from the beta pop quiz and plan to produce that a smooth implementation.

Original post by Karl B.

This change was made that week to our internal input. I don’t know whether it will be in the beta push that week or next. The level 70 chance for the set bonus to trigger in Bear structure and Cat structure is 4%. For each level gained past 70, that chance will drop by 0.4%, reaching 0% at level 80. Despite the loss, I believe most Feral Druids will be happy to fi..

Original post by Karl B.