Gotnerf of Vashj is facing a not-entirely-uncommon dilemma.His fiancé is has shown no interest in playingWoW.He believes that once she spends some time seeing him enjoy the game she will want to join in. Gotnerf asked other guys how they got their wives to play.While some suggestions were entirely unhelpful, many seemed encouraging.
Leadfoot of Feathermoon suggested a direct approach "You know how you're always saying we should spend more time together?We can share this together, honey."That's more or less how it worked for me.Zelkari of Spirestone recommended something most ladies can't resist, "Show her druids and their flight form."Strumpet of Eldre'thalas had some very grounding advice from experience:
Between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. PDT today (Sunday July 27th) all U.S. realms will be undergoing a rolling restart. Each realm should be down for about 15 minutes, though these things have a tendency to last longer than scheduled.
The login announcement tells us that the servers are getting a hotfix applied to them, however there is no indication what the hotfix is for.
If anything does happen to extend this restart, you'll see it here on WoW Insider.
Somehow I missed the memo that Blizzard was changing the minimap to include an upfront clock, alarm, and stopwatch.It's a pretty neat idea.My favorite part is that you can switch the clock to read local time.This adds to time management tools located in the account setting to limit play time.
As I've mentioned before, I live in Las Vegas.It's a strange place, with time dimensions similar to World of Warcraft.You have to look pretty hard to find a clock or a window in one of the casinos and the floors are like mazes that are designed to disorient you.Why?They want you to stay there and spend your money.As far as I know, WoW has always had a clock, but until yesterday, you had to hover your mouse over it to see the time.You can always look around the room.I don't know how many times I've checked the time and wondered where the time went.I found it nice tonight to have it right in front of me.
All U.S. realms will be offline for extended maintenance tomorrow from 5:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. This came from an announcement via the login screen.
Servers have been mostly stable this past week after a series of rolling restarts Blizzard did a few days ago. Hopefully this won't cause too many problems for those hoping to enjoy the game Tuesday evening.
Stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest on realm issues and other WoW news.
Posted May 12th 2008 7:00PM by Eliah Hecht Filed under: Tips
Back in the day, you could get 60 day playtime cards for $20 at Amazon, all the time. This appears to be the resurrection of that deal: the same cards are currently available for $20 at Circuit City. This is, as they say, a $30 value, assuming you normally pay the single-month rate of $15 per month. The cards are sold out online, but available for in-store pickup; click over to the site and enter your ZIP code to see if they're available in your store.
Personally, I'm not going for it, because the closest Circuit City is about 15 minutes away, and also because I like to pay for a month at a time and then cancel my account. That way, if I happen not to be able to play for some amount of time after my subscription is up, it doesn't renew until I need it and go renew it manually (which takes all of two minutes), and so I save a few bucks. But for those with more regular play schedules, this looks like a good deal. [via the Bronze Kettle]
What's your favorite time of the week to get some good WoW gaming in?
It used to be that I really enjoyed playing on the evenings weeknights -- I'd rush home from work to sign into Azeroth and enjoy the primtime evening crowds. Then, I started raiding, and I looked forward to raid nights every week -- usually Tuesday and Sunday. Nowadays, I'm mostly soloing my way through daily quests and new content, and strangely enough, I enjoy logging on early on weekend mornings. I start around 8am on Saturdays and Sundays, and then play through until 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Of course, those aren't the only times I play -- I like signing in whenever I have a chance, either to level up or run a group with a few friends. But I really enjoy playing on weekend mornings, with my coffee and maybe a DVD on in the background. What's your favorite time of the week to play?
I recently posted about how I dropped Mining in order to take up Enchanting to better contribute to my PvP efforts. As of this writing, I've got my Enchanting at an unexciting 245 (update: now at 350). All our banked low-level mats have been used up and I'm hitting a barrier with lacking more than a few Nether Essences. I do have the option of buying them from the Auction House, which will certainly help me skill up faster, but it will also end up breaking my already quite broke(n) back. On the other hand, my wife leveled her Enchanting rather patiently, refusing to rewrite enchantments on gear except for the most inexpensive ones. She would diligently inspect people and their gear in major cities and offer free enchantments. Over time, she acquired enough raw materials and enchanted enough people to hit 375 -- all without spending a single Copper coin.
I'm not quite as patient. Actually, I'm impatient as heck. My wife refuses to Buyout anything from the Auction Houses, instead waiting patiently for Auctions to end, getting things for the lowest possible price. The only time she uses Buyout is when it's an incredibly good deal (thanks to Auctioneer). I, on the other hand, Buyout pretty much everything, more interested in getting the item/s right away than saving Gold. I guess that's why I don't have much and my wife, well, has more than quite a bit. So, here's my question. Are you the kind of player who would rather save your time or your money? Are you patient enough to wait for auctions to end, or the kind who clicks the Buy Now option on eBay? Would you rather farm your raw materials or buy them off the Auction House -- Buyout style?
Bloodlust/Heroism will not stack with [the new] Power Infusion, however.
He tells us the reasoning behind this is "...two spells increasing haste by a percentage will not stack if both can be cast on a target other than the caster..." So this appears to continue the trend we've seen of modifying haste based abilities, both in their power and stacking abilities.
For those that don't know about Shamans, Bloodlust and Heroism are Shaman abilities (Bloodlust is the name of the spell for the Horde, Heroism is the name of the spell for the Alliance) that decrease casting time by 30% for 40 seconds. It is often used in raids to get that extra "umpf" necessary to get a boss down quickly.
Icy Veins is a Mage talent based spell that decreases casting time by 20% for 20 seconds (and increase the chance the target will freeze by 20%). The combination of Bloodlust/Heroism and Icy Veins is a very potent combination.
Power Infusion is a Priest talent that will have some changes come patch 2.4. It will now decrease casting time by 20% as well as decrease the mana cost by 20%. It's interesting that Blizzard decided to allow the stacking with Mages, but not with priests. The difference in the two spells is that Power Infusion can be cast on other targets, while Icy Veins can only be cast on yourself. Indeed, this follows with what Tharfor said in his post (which Drysc left out).
What do you think of these changes? Any major issue with them?
For whatever reason, your game has been experiencing multiple server related issues in the past few weeks. Many players have seen themselves offline an abnormal amount of time, and for no apparent reason. Some realms have been brought offline for emergency maintenance and stayed that way for nearly a day. Other realms are seeing themselves either reset or become sundered down with mass disconnects that make any serious play almost impossible.
Just the other night I was happily grouping with some friends over on Eldre'Thalas, when all of the sudden the server decided to boot me, and only me, from the game. Lo and behold, when trying to log back in I get stuck on authentication. My other two accounts would not work either. What makes this even better is that Eldre'Thalas wasn't even on the list of realms under emergency maintenance.
You've been giving us all this downtime lately, so I'm wondering, what are you going to do to fix it? Or baring a fix, at least make our $15 a month worth it.
Have you ever played WoW and gotten so absorbed that you totally lost track of time? Then suddenly you realize you're late for something important and you get in big trouble, right? Or perhaps you lose some important sleep?
Today's breakfast topic is not only an opportunity to share horror stories about what happened when you or someone you know played WoW without checking the clock, but it's also a handy reminder to always stay aware of the real world, where time is measured in minutes and hours rather than levels and gear.
WoW tends to be a night time activity for most people, many of whom find that it's surprisingly easy to move from one objective to another and lose track of time until the wee hours of the morning. Some people I know sometimes stay up most of the night playing WoW, only to get an hour or two of sleep before whatever they have to do the next day. They're young and they say they make up that sleep at other times, but still, no one would argue that this sort of situation is ideal.
A recent study reported by CNN says they're not alone. People who play MMORPGs tend to sleep less and spend more time playing than players of other computer games. It may seem obvious, since MMOs are by nature somewhat of a time-sink, but there is undeniably something more to it; any activity can potentially be a time-sink, after all -- so what is it about MMOs that makes people actually sink time?
The answer is up for debate, of course, but one important factor is that WoW's community of players gives the accomplishments within the game a context of reality. The game's goals, dangling in front of us like carrots, would be nearly meaningless if we could only appreciate them in a single-player context, but with a whole realm of other players working alongside us to get them too, they can feel very important. If the choice is between a few hours having dreams you won't remember, or getting a little closer to riding an impressive dragon mount, then certainly sleep can seem boring and useless by comparison.
Each week, Robin Torres contributes Azeroth Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with WoW.
Today I'm going to answer some Reader Mail from Berzurk:
Hello Robin,
I played the original EQ for about a year, and I took a break for a long time. I just last week got into WoW, and I am loving it. I have been scared, however, that it may end up ruining my life. My g/f doesn't like video games much, and I'm about to get a new job to help pay bills. I can't, however, give up my passion for MMO's. It's just my nature.
I did have one idea though. In your opinion, do you believe it would be beneficial to just play for a set amount a day on WoW, instead of hours at a time? I know that life comes first, but I almost always have about 2 spare hours to myself everyday. Do you believe that maybe an hour a day would be a decent amount of playtime?
Thanks.
Berzurk, Human Warrior, Lvl 8, Stormwind City
Hello Berzurk,
Because you are aware enough of the addiction risks in playing WoW and have already proposed a solution, you are definitely on the right track to playing WoW without it hurting Real Life. You can play WoW for an hour a day and have fun, but there are limitations to what you can do in WoW with that schedule of which you should be aware.
It's so easy to lose track of time when playing World of Warcraft. You start out grinding this reputation, leveling that alt, then get invited to go run an instance, then come back and check the auction, then inspect some people standing around in their pretty epics... and suddenly discover that it's 1 in the morning and you've spent many more hours playing this game than you had planned.
Then again, for some people, limiting themselves isn't at all the problem -- it's limiting their kids they worry about! Their children agree to only play for 1 hour, but then 2 or 3 hours go by and they're still in there at the computer, saying, "But Daaaaad, I forgot!"
If either you or your loved one needs a gentle reminder about how much time has gone by while adventuring in Azeroth, WoWTimer may be the addon for you.
Blizzard VP Rob Pardo has made it
to TIME Magazine's yearly list of 100 people who are transforming the world around us. Pardo, they say
"didn't invent this kind of game... he merely perfected it." It's interesting to see that World of
Warcraft has developed such a high profile with those outside the gaming industry - enough to have Rob Pardo on TIME's
100. Of course, with 6 million players and counting, how could this game not have an impact? From my
perspective (from the inside looking out), it's hard to see World of Warcraft transforming the world around us - but
what do you think?
Gotnerf of Vashj is facing a not-entirely-uncommon dilemma. His fiancé is has shown no interest in playing WoW. He believes that once she spends some time seeing him enjoy the game she will want to join in. Gotnerf asked other guys how they got their wives to play. While some suggestions were entirely unhelpful, many seemed encouraging. 
Between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. PDT today (Sunday July 27th) all U.S. realms will be undergoing a rolling restart. Each realm should be down for about 15 minutes, though these things have a tendency to last longer than scheduled.
Somehow I missed the memo that Blizzard was changing the minimap to include an 
All U.S. 
What's your favorite time of the week to get some good WoW gaming in?
I recently posted about how 
Tharfor
Dear Blizzard,
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