Dec 29

I cannot speak for all Death Knights, so I will speak for myself.

There has been some misunderstanding as to why I do what I do. Innocence lost? To hell and back with your innocence. Save others? The environment? Some shiny piece of steel? Don’t make me laugh. I do what I do for one thing: revenge.

It sounds cliche, sure. But what Arthas took from me wasn’t innocence; what Arthas took from me was choice. Under his command, I killed friends, family, and strangers alike. The part of me that would be horrified at those sights is dead now, taken by Arthas, replaced with hatred and cruelty, tools that he used–that I used–to commit atrocities that would make most people vomit in disgust. “Friend” and “family” mean nothing to me now. They taste empty and dry in my mouth, like sand.

And what you people don’t seem to understand is this: I don’t care anymore because I can’t care anymore! And what drives me mad is knowing that I should, but I don’t! I should be sad about what I did, I should bemoan the decisions I made, but I am not and do not because I cannot–and that is why I hate Arthas. All that is left within me is what Arthas put there to make me into the killing machine I am. Hypocrisy doesn’t mean anything to me because I don’t understand anything but what I am now.

Everything I do, I do to bring me closer to Arthas or a minion of the Scourge. Even if I should care about the D.H.E.T.A. and their animals, I don’t–I assist them because the money and provisions they reward bring me closer to Arthas. Even if I should care about the blue dragonflight and the destruction of magic, I don’t–I assist them because another day’s postponement of Malygos’ plan is another day I can spend slaughtering Scourge. I spend my days with the Alliance because they will tolerate me, because I was once human, not because I care one bit about the stupid, insignificant spat between the Alliance and the Horde.

And you ignorantly think I gave myself to Arthas to become a monster by making these choices once I was freed from his grasp? How little you understand. Perhaps you should not speak of things which you could not possibly fathom. The choices I make now–to kill others–Arthas made for me, without my permission, long ago. Now, one thing matters to me, and one thing only, and that is having my revenge. And I will use the tools given to me–even if those tools were given to me by Arthas–to kill, maim, rip, slash, tear, destroy, disease, degenerate, freeze, or skewer anyone who stands in my way.

Because I don’t know anything else. Because I can’t know anything else.

Related posts:

1. I Spoke Demonic?
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight
3. Preparing for a Death Knight
4. Even a Single Kara Pugger
5. Standing Room Only

Dec 26

The Craft of War: BLIND is a machinima that was recently featured on WOW Insider. I’m posting it here because, in my opinion, it was one of the most technically-superior and fun-to-watch machinima’s I’ve ever seen–right up there with Tales of the Past III. There is no voice acting, but as Michael put it, it doesn’t need any. The animations are clean and very believable, and overall this movie is a great action flick.

Do yourself a favor, and head over to the Vimeo site and watch this video there, so you get their “HD” feature.

Related posts:

1. Most Incredible Machinima Ever
2. Wowhead gets Dynamic Search
3. NVIDIA’s 3D Glasses Already Work with WoW
4. Greetings
5. Pets Walking into Combat

Dec 25

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Related posts:

1. Happy Thanksgiving!

Dec 17

Even though I play Alliance, several good friends of mine play Horde (and I probably would too, had I not invested so much time into my Alliance characters already). Anyway, I was watchin one of my friends (BUDDAY!) PUG a 40-man raid on the Alliance capital cities one day, when he and his group decided to regroup inside the tram. I forced him to take this screenshot, which makes me laugh to this day.

(Clicky to make bigger!)

That poor Undead guy.

Related posts:

1. Screenshot Six
2. Letter from War: The Plaguelands
3. New StarCraft 2 Cinematic
4. Machinima Feature: Wrought by Legs, Cranius, and Peratus
5. Happy Thanksgiving!

Dec 17

I’ve always really enjoyed questing. It’s one of my favorite parts of the game. One you’re level 80, you also get increased amounts of gold instead of experience. So, when I hit 80, I decided the first thing I would do would be to finish the rest of my questing, which included half of Sholazar Basin, Storm Peaks, and Icecrown, and attempt to make my 5000g for epic flight training at the same time.

Yesterday, I achieved the Loremaster of Northrend achievement. Now, I’m not much of an “achievement whore,” but I really enjoyed earning this one. I’ve done every non-daily quest I could find in Northrend, except the three to kill the riders in Icecrown, and then the big guy (which is the follow up). There is a ton of lore to experience, and in Wrath it’s more immersive than ever. I highly recommend anyone interested in the story–especially of Arthas–to do every quest they can in Icecrown!

Related posts:

1. Different This Time
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend
3. Baby Healer Dings 80
4. It’s the Little Things
5. Pressing On

Dec 11

As you may have guess from the title of this post, PTR 3.0.8 is now live. All the changes that have been disucssed since Wrath launched that were to come out “in a patch before the Ulduar content patch” are in here. Some notable changes:

General

• Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostrider? Tauren on raptor? You’re not seeing things.
• Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.

Druids

• Feral Attack Power: All weapons now have the potential to grant feral attack power based on their dps (as compared to the best superior-quality weapons available at level 60).  Players will see their existing feral weapons grant roughly the same attack power as they did before (+/- 2 or so), but many new weapons will be options for the feral druid.  Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them.  All druids will see the amount of feral attack power granted by an item in the item tooltip, if it grants any, but other players will not see that information.

Warlock

• Ritual of Summoning: Will now create a summoning portal object which can be re-used for multiple summons for 5 minutes.

Warrior

• Fury: Titan’s Grip: The hit chance penalty has been removed.

These are just a few of a large number of enhancements, bug fixes, and other additions (including new achievements and associated rewards). MMO Champion has the full scoop.

Related posts:

1. Patch 3.0.8 Notes Updated – Highlights
2. Patch 2.4
3. Two-Hand Tanking Weapons will Not be Implemented
4. The Death of the Epic Mount Quests
5. Greetings

Dec 11

Taken from the World of Warcraft Character Re-Customization Screen:

Character Re-Customization

Welcome to the Character Re-Customization page. This service lets you customize your character’s appearance, and includes an optional name change. Please note that each customization costs $15.00 USD per character customized. If you plan on changing the character’s name during the customization, please familiarize yourself with the World of Warcraft Naming Policy.

Things to know before you start!

• This service lets you change your character’s gender, face, hair and skin color, hairstyle, name, and other cosmetic features determined by their race and gender combination. You cannot, however, change your character’s race or class.
• Each Character Re-Customization costs $15.00 USD (not including applicable taxes). This covers a single customization for a single character.
• A character may only be customized once every 30 days.
• If you change the character’s name during this process, the name you choose must be available on the character’s realm, and must be within the World of Warcraft Naming Policy.
• A Character Re-Customization cannot be reversed once completed, except by a second customization operation (subject to the above costs and limitations).
• If you change the character’s name during this process, then once the name change is completed, your character’s old name will be locked from use on the realm for 90 days. After that time, the old name becomes available again and can be claimed by anyone on its realm on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Please review the Character Re-Customization FAQ for answers to common questions about this service.

Clicking continue takes you to a screen where you can select your realm and character:

Select a character to customize by clicking “Customize.” You are then asked to enter either credit card information, or a “Character Re-Customization gift card Redemption Code,” which sounds like an interesting idea.

After you have paid up, there will be a new button when you log in that lets you customize your character. It can be done at your convenience–you don’t have to do it right away.

Related posts:

1. Arena PTR Open
2. Greetings
3. New Life Tap Getting Another Look?
4. WotLK Information Released
5. Patch 2.4

Dec 10

Howdy, everyone. In case you haven’t heard yet, several classes have some fairly significant changes incoming to the next PTR, and this includes death knights. These are primarily changes to tanking (making it less cooldown based across the board), defensive abilities in PvP, and improving the Blood talent tree.

Some of these changes are very straightforward, such as “Bone Shield — mitigation reduced from 40% to 20%.” Some of them are not so obvious, such as “Many death knight glyphs have been changed. In many cases the negative consequences were removed.” Either way, all these changes will be tested on the PTR and likely revisited and revised.

This comes in the middle of finishing up my series on death knights. I am going to review the changes and determine what method would be best when approaching incorporating them into the articles. Just a bit more patience.

You can review the proposed changes here.

Related posts:

1. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Gear
3. Howling Blast Cooldown Not Removed
4. Coming Soon: So You Wanna Play a Death Knight
5. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Tanking

Dec 5

I apologize, but I have decided to delay the release of the “So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight” series. I want to take some extra time and make sure it is all it can be before posting it to the site. I anticipate it will be up next week, but I’m not 100% certain.

For the first time in my life, I can empathize with the phrases “soon” and “when it’s ready…”

Related posts:

1. Death Knight Series Starts Tomorrow
2. Coming Soon: So You Wanna Play a Death Knight
3. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight
4. Can I Make It?
5. Preparing for a Death Knight

Dec 5

“You just dinged level 80; what are you going to do next?”

Not go to Disney World. That (or, rather, Disneyland) happens next Thanksgiving.

Anyway–it is common for folks to hit the level cap, take a step back, and say those two famous words: “Now what?” Thankfully, I thought about this a bit as I was leveling, and the first answer is “nothing different.” Perhaps I should specify:

1. Continue to level. Finish the new content (still have half of Sholazar Basin and all of Storm Peaks and Icecrown to do) and earn gold for the epic flier.

2. After the 5000g is earned and spent, start to level tradeskills. My mining is 11 (thanks only to a quest) and my engineering is 1.

3a. Before finishing #1, have a concrete gear plan. I’ve already began the path to uncrittability, but I need to decide what reps to grind (after Wyrmrest) and what dungeons to farm.

3b. Get enough gear to be uncrittable for heroics and begin tanking them. Try to get some runs as DPS and nab some gear if I can before then.

During all this process, I’m going to be on the lookout for a guild to do some raiding in. I need to sit down and figure out how often I want to raid, so that’s part of the process.

Related posts:

1. Not Very Professional
2. Preparing for WotLK
3. Can I Make It?
4. Decisions
5. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction