European players have been apparently encountering lag, disconnections, and neglect from Blizzard Europe for the past little while (or so they keep writing into us and saying). Perhaps this is what the European team has been working on: they've just released official Wrath talent calculators, for all ten classes.
At a glance, I didn't notice any differences between this and the calculators that have been up on Wowhead (and elsewhere) for a little while - i.e., they both reflect the current beta versions of everything. And I actually find that the Wowhead calculators run better for me (after all, talent calculators were Wowhead's original reason for being). Still, it's exciting to see these made official: a sign that the Lich King draws ever nearer. Can anyone spot a difference between the official calculators and what we already knew?
To tell the truth, I'm a little disappointed. I've got a beta key from BlizzCon, but I've already signed up for the Wrath beta through the usual channels. Of course, we still don't know how this works -- maybe those with a key will be given access before those who just signed up randomly, but it sure seems like everybody will get in eventually. Which means that even if you didn't get a key at BlizzCon, you'll still get into the beta anyway. I thought that Blizzard would have treated those who came out to their event a little better (and, at the very least, been a lot clearer about how registration for the beta is working -- are they making it up as they go along?).
But on the other hand, the open registration just means more people will get into the beta, and I don't have a problem with that -- the more the merrier. As always, the problem with Blizzard is communication -- it's fine if they want to keep which beta these WWI or BlizzCon keys are for a secret, but when the beta registration actually starts, they should make a plan, stick with it, and let all of us would-be beta testers in on what it is.
Blizzard has announced alpha testing for the new Russian version of World of Warcraft.The post on the WoW-Europe forums invitesRussian-speaking layers to join in a technical test connection and latency issues within the new version of the game.This will be followed by a localization beta that coincide with the release of patch 2.4.3. The announcement is posted in .
Dedicated forums are slated to be released next week for Russian WoW.Many questions remain unanswered.Hopefully in the coming weeks more information will be released. Currently a number of realms exist on EU servers that are inhabited by Russian-speaking players.Will there be free migrations for players on existing "Russian realms?"
I never thought it would happen, but I'm eating my words -- Turpster, of the WoW Insider Show (and Turpstervision over on Massively) is going to ding 70 with his Shadow Priest before the expansion. And in fact, he's giving you the opportunity to not only see it, but to take him down right beforehand.
Yes, this weekend, right after our live show on WoW Radio (which starts at 3:30pm Eastern, or 8:30pm GMT), Turpster will be hanging out in the Gnome/Dwarf starting area of the European Sporeggar server, and right before he dings, he's giving you and all of the other Gnomes who show up the chance to try and take him out as a raid boss. He's even got a strategy posted, and trust me when I say he's got this all planned out as a real, chaotic, surely hilarious raid fight -- this will definitely be a sight to see. And there's loot in it, too -- if you're one of the Gnomes who drops him, you could nab a Tabard of Flame code or a few other cool prizes.
If you're on the US servers, don't worry -- Turpster has written up a quick and easy guide to get you running on the EU realms (you don't have to redownload anything, all you have to do is make an EU trial account). Should be a lot of fun, and make sure to Fraps or screenshot it if you're there. Tune in on Saturday for the WoW Insider Show live on WoW Radio, and then join us afterwards on EU Sporeggar (roll a Gnome, so Turpster looks like a really big raid boss) to take down the T and then watch him ding 70!
Firstly, I would like to apologize for the image at right, which is really not directly related. However, the only thing I could think when seeing the battlegroup name was Helium going "Miiiisewy" -- watch these flash videos, especially the first one, and understand.
Now that's out of the way, here's what I meant to talk about. Apparently the realms in the European battlegroup Misery had some maintenance difficulties on May 21st and 28th, and will be compensated by the upstanding people at Blizz with a free day of playtime.
So if you have a character on any of the following realms, enjoy your €0.43 worth of credit: Aerie Peak, Boulderfist, Eonar, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Jaedenar, Kazzak, Kilrogg, Outland, Ravenholdt, Stonemaul, Tarren Mill, Vek'nilash, and Wildhammer. Oddly enough, they're also giving a day's worth of rested bonus to affected characters, which is something I haven't seen them do before. I wonder if that's going to be the norm in the future.
Now that right there is what you call a bow. The very first legendary ranged weapon ever, Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury, has dropped on the live realms, from Kil'jaeden as expected. Last Resort on EU Boulderfist is the lucky guild, and Stefang is the lucky Hunter (seen here with his bow and Kalecgos) -- feel free to check his Armory page, as long as you're careful not to drool on the keyboard.
Thori'dal, as you probably know by now, shoots its own ammunition, which means that not only did Stefang win a nice bow, but he now has an extra bag slot (something all Hunters probably want even more than a legendary weapon). There's no word on how the giveaway went down (we're guessing DKP, and if Stefang did anything less than cash in everything he had, he got this thing for a bargain), but grats to both him and Last Resort for a very, very nice piece of loot.
Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational contest is becoming quite a production. They've just announced another contest as part of the lineup: a costume contest! Just to recap, let's see what has been announced:
Actual gameplay contests, in Warcraft III, Starcraft, and WoW
Hands-on play of Starcraft II and Wrath of the Lich King
...and now a costume contest.
The fourth annual WWI will be held in Paris, on June 28th and 29th. So you have just over a month to scrape together your best Curator suit and learn how to say "gallery rules will be strictly enforced" in that disaffected, slightly psychotic robot voice. Get cracking! I want to hear your costume ideas in the comments.
On the fourth day of the second Sunwell Plateaugates being opened there, the European guild SK-Gaming has achieved the world-first kill of M'uru, the fifth SWP boss. Good job, guys! This is all the more surprising because I don't think of SK-Gaming as one of the big-name guilds, but maybe I've just been missing out. Edit: D'oh! That's the guild formerly known as Curse. I knew the name looked familiar. Also, I would sort of have expected the US realms to get there first because their gates opened a day earlier. But on the other hand, Europe has been on top of the world firsts for a while.
You can see the loot above -- click to embiggen. That Shifting Naaru Sliver sounds fun.
Here's an interesting idea from Shaela over on the EU forums: group duels. Right now, duels aren't a huge part of the game for anyone but lowbies and immature folks looking to pick a fight -- they're very rarely done right, and there's no reward except for a zone-wide shoutout given in the event they're won. But the system could probably use an update, and group or guild duels are a great idea -- all that guild drama could be worked out ingame as whole raids or guilds could clash against each other.
Slorkuz weasels his way out of a real answer by saying that this is already possible in game: places like the Gurubashi Arena do let whole groups of people fight each other however they like. He also says that Blizzard has no plans to add any features like this, but he's slightly wrong -- we did get told at Blizzcon that they were going to do more along the lines of Guild vs. Guild combat, if only in the existing BGs. This idea, along with guild housing, is still in the works somewhere, at least.
Of course, with any player interaction feature like this, there is always the opportunity for exploitation -- some players have probably refused enough duel invites in their day without having to worry about any more, and whenever you have someone "speaking" (as in, accepting or rejecting a duel) for a group in terms of PvP, you can run into trouble. But for those who really would like to know whether their guild could beat another guild, or just which raid is better than another one, a feature like this would definitely be welcomed.
PlayNoEvil is a blog that claims to do "MMO security news and analysis" -- they've got an interesting post up trying their best to track gold selling prices over time in various MMOs (the information itself seems to come from MMOBux.com). The World of Warcraft graphs (US seen above, EU on the site) show that for whatever reason, in the US at least, gold prices seem to be dropping. Of course, whether that's driven by low demand (thanks to Blizzard's daily quest implementation and other anti-gold selling mechanics), or high supply, we aren't quite sure.
In the EU, things aren't so clear -- while there are still bumps around content releases, things are holding pretty steadily at a price well below the United States. Either way, no matter what price it is, we should note as well that buying gold from anywhere is against Blizzard's terms of service and will get you banned. Hopefully, these lower prices in WoW mean that Blizzard's attacks on goldsellers are working, and that low demand has driven the price down further than its been in a long time. Even so, and even assuming that these prices actually do correspond to the market (no idea where MMOBux gets their info from), there's not much concrete info we can suss out of this other than the fact that prices are dropping in the US.
A bit over a month ago, all the realms in the European battlegroups Crueldad, Hinterhalt, Némésis, and Nightfall suffered some extra downtime, and players on them received a credit for a free day of playtime to compensate. Looks like it's happened again. In exchange for for six hours of downtime on April 6, members on those battlegroups will once again get a free day. Here's a list of the affected realms:
Crueldad: C'Thun, Dun Modr, Los Errantes, Minahonda, Shen'dralar, Tyrande, Uldum, Zul'Jin
Hinterhalt: Arygos, Der Mithrilorden, Dethecus, Forscherliga, Norgannon, Teldrassil, Todeswache, Un'Goro
Némésis: Arak-arahm, Confrérie du Thorium, Eitrigg, Garona, La Croisade écarlate, Medivh, Uldaman, Vol'jin
It seems like there have been free character migrations for Europe constantly for the past few months. Well, this week is no different. Thundgot announced the following free moves, available from today, April 9th, to next Wednesday, April 15th, all for PvP realms (I think):
Those of you who want to switch, get your move on soon, because transfers may close early if they get the population balance they want (although I can only remember this happening once). Out of curiosity, European readers: what countries are you in?
Thundgot, the undead European CM, announced today that there are a few free character transfers amongst realms that will be starting today, and go through March 25th.
You can move from Al'Akir, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Outland, or Twilight's Hammer over to Burning Steppes or Spinebreaker. Of course, this only for all our European readers. No U.S. realms are current open for free transfers.
If you want to take advantage of this, do so quickly! They often close down these transfers early when they meet their internal goals.
Man, you European players just can't seem to balance server load, can you? /cast Evasion. Once again, here's a round of free character migrations for European servers, open from yesterday to next Tuesday, March 18 (my birthday!).
Standard disclaimer: the transfers may be closed early if the desired population levels are attained, so transfer ASAP if you want to. However, I'm not sure that this happens very often; in fact, last time the transfers were extended for another week because not enough people had taken advantage of it. Standard closing questions: if you're on one of the "from" realms, will you be taking advantage of this? If you're on one of the "to" realms, do you welcome the newcomers?
Apparently there was some extra downtime (7 hours!) for some of the European realms on Wednseday. To compensate, Blizzard is giving a one-day playtime credit to anyone with an active character in the affected battlegroups: Crueldad, Hinterhalt, Némésis, and Nightfall. That's one of the things I like about Blizz -- they may mess up, but when they do, they try to fix it (except when it comes to Life Tap).
In case you're not sure what battlegroup you're in, here's the realm listings. If you have an active character on any of these European realms, you will be credited a day of playtime.
Crueldad: C'Thun, Dun Modr, Los Errantes, Minahonda, Shen'dralar, Tyrande, Uldum, Zul'Jin
Hinterhalt: Arygos, Der Mithrilorden, Dethecus, Forscherliga, Norgannon, Teldrassil, Todeswache, Un'Goro
Némésis: Arak-arahm, Confrérie du Thorium, Eitrigg, Garona, La Croisade écarlate, Medivh, Uldaman, Vol'jin
EU CM Wryxian has good news for everyone who attended BlizzCon last year (or just 
I never thought it would happen, but I'm eating my words -- Turpster, of the 
Now that right there is what you call a bow. The very first legendary ranged weapon ever, 
Here's 
A bit over a month ago, all the realms in the European battlegroups Crueldad, Hinterhalt, Némésis, and Nightfall suffered some extra downtime, and players on them 
Thundgot
Apparently there was some extra downtime (7 hours!) for some of the European realms on Wednseday. To compensate, Blizzard is 
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