Manda's tales from the TTR: Stress edition

Posted Mar 9th 2008 10:45PM by Amanda Miller
Filed under: Horde, Realm News, Patches, Events, Blizzard, Bosses, Mounts, Interviews, Arena

Sunday's Tournament Test Realm stress test was, in my opinion, a huge success. Despite the lag, the occasional crash or kick, and a one-hour maintenance downtime, the server held up quite well considering just how many people were bombing around on it. After maintenance, the lag improved quite a bit, and I'm guessing that Blizzard learned a fair amount that will help them to design the arena tournament realm.

Of course, interaction with the GMs, fighting spawned bosses dropping orange epics, being polymorphed into all sorts of things, receiving rare mounts, and reading through /general, /say, and /yell, not to mention tells, were the real highlights from yesterday. While Alex has already given a fairly detailed account of our adventures, I have some stories of my own to tell.

Gallery: TTR Stress Test Gallery

Continue reading Manda's tales from the TTR: Stress edition

Stress test live blog

Posted Mar 9th 2008 3:02PM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Events, News items, PvP, Mounts, Arena

We've been preparing for the stress test, are mostly gemmed and enchanted up, and are looking to fight! I'll be updating this post as things happen, hopefully with riveting tales of victory and triumph over Alliance Care Bears. (Kidding of course, my main is an Human warrior.)

Read on after the break for the updates! We'll keep this front page only for things that are affecting everyone.

Updated 5:23 p.m. PST: Live blogging wrapped up for the day. Many many thanks to all the fans and GMs out there! It was a great day with lots of cool stuff happening. More analysis over the next couple days!

Gallery: TTR Stress Test Gallery

Continue reading Stress test live blog

Spectral Tiger Safari

Posted Feb 27th 2008 1:00PM by Amanda Dean
Filed under: Blizzard, Contests, Screenshots, Mounts, WoW TCG

Until now, the elusive Spectral Tiger Mount has been a steed for World of Warcraft Trading Card Game players only. The Spectral Tiger will be the grand prize of Blizzard's latest contest. The complete prize breakdown:

• Grand Prize Winner: "Spectral Tiger loot card" from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, and one World of Warcraft TCG Expansion, "March of the Legion," booster box.
• Second Prize: "Robotic Homing Chicken Loot Card," from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, and oneWorld of Warcraft TCG Expansion, "March of the Legion," booster box.
• Three Runner's Up WinnersWorld of Warcraft TCG Expansion, "March of the Legion," booster box.

You don't have to play the card game to win. In order to enter all you have to do is submit an exciting screenshot of your character. Only submissions that include a chat bubble that says "Safari" will be accepted into the contest. Judges will be looking for high-quality, unmodified screenshots. Blizzard reminds you to "Use all the elements you can to give some spice to your pictures: landscape, monsters, other players, etc."

Why do you want a TCG card? The Spectral Tiger loot card has a code that translates into a rare in-game mount. The deadline for submission is 12:00 PM on March 5^th. Check out Blizzard's official contest page for further information.

Good luck, and good hunting.

Upper Deck announces new booster set and Spectral Safari details

Posted Feb 5th 2008 2:01PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Items, Odds and ends, Contests, WoW TCG

Two big pieces of news today from Upper Deck about the WoW TCG-- first of all, they've announced details about their latest booster set, called Servants of the Betrayer, and available this coming April. The set will have new sub-factions, new ally types, and heretofore unreleased abilities for your deck. Additionally, the booster packs will continue the trend set in the last expansion, and contain 19 cards per pack, with those extra loot consumable cards showing up more often.

Second, Upper Deck has also revealed details of the Spectral Safari, a series of events at local card stores at which players will be able to win the Spectral Tiger Mount card. The contests will take place on March 1st at selected retail locations, and the winner of each contest will take home a Spectral Tiger Mount, while a Robotic Homing Chicken will be given away as a door prize, and Upper Deck will give out other prizes to winners as well.

So mark your calendars for March 1st if you plan to attend one of the tournaments, and look out for Servants of the Betrayer in stores in April (that's the booster set, not actual servants of Illidan).

TCG's new pet enlarging loot card.

Posted Jan 18th 2008 9:01AM by David Bowers
Filed under: Hunter, Warlock, PvP, RP, WoW TCG, Arena

I've never actually had the privilege of playing the WoW Trading Card Game on account of living in China, where they don't sell this sort of stuff. But I always love to see the special items from loot cards you can find in the TGC. I've seen people with the spectral tiger a couple of times, as well as a bunch of people with the picnic grill and even a dragon kite.

But with their latest expansion pack, Servants of the Betrayer (they come out with expansion packs right quick compared to Blizzard, don't they?), they've added a "super-common" loot card. Apparently every single booster box full of smaller booster packets is supposed to have two of these things, a "Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit," so pretty soon we may find this sort of item becoming rather ubiquitous. You'll also be able to use it with each of the characters you play, rather than having to choose just one.

But what exactly does it do? As you can see in the pic above, taken from their website, it'll make your non-combat pet you have grow significantly in size, up to the size of a normal hunter pet. But for me the really exciting thing is that it will enlarge your hunter and warlock pets too! I've always wanted to have a hunter with a huge pet, much bigger than my actual character for roleplay reasons, but it seems this might even be an advantage in PvP and Arenas, too, if I made my wing-flapping owl so huge that other players can't see past it so easily, for example. Anyways, this might be the first loot card that is not entirely outside the average player's reach, and especially attractive to two popular classes, no less.

TCG goes on a Spectral Safari

Posted Jan 17th 2008 10:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Contests, WoW TCG

Our friends at Upper Deck have announced an interesting series of tournaments with one of the best prizes they could give out: a Spectral Tiger card. There'll be more info on January 31st, they say, but apparently retail outlets all over the country are going to hold tournaments of their own, and the grand prize at each and every one is a Spectral Tiger mount card.

There'll also be booster packs given out (of course), and a lucky door prize winner at each event will pick up the Robotic Homing Chicken card. Pretty cool to see that UD is going to spread the love around a bit (although they haven't yet announced just how many tournaments are going down). If there are a lot of retail places participating in this, you could see a lot more ghostly tigers around the realms.

More info is coming to Upper Deck's site on January 31st. We'll keep an eye out and let you know when and where your chance to pick up the loot cards will be.

WoW Moviewatch: The 2.2 Spectral Tiger

Posted Sep 28th 2007 12:00PM by Elizabeth Harper
Filed under: Patches, Machinima, WoW Moviewatch

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