(The sinister Baron Soosdon felt that Vimeo was the best quality stream, so he made me change it from the Veoh stream. Now it has a funky looking aspect ratio! However, he does not blame me for destroying his non-existant PR campaign, so it's okay.)
The year is 1985. Gnomeregan merges with Aperture Science, which causes a chain reaction, altering history forever. In 1987, they decide to install GLaDOS on a mechanistrider, which leads to a killing spree in 1989. In the distant future, only MechaMurlocs exist, except for one determined little gnome.
If you can believe it, Baron Soosdon completed this movie in one day! He was apparently inspired by an infectious tune that was mentioned in #machinima on Quakenet IRC. For more information about This Device Has Been Modified, check out his blog, but be sure to download the high quality version.
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.
About GuildPortal
GuildPortal is a very popular WoW guild website, and has been around for a long time. Because of that, it's a very mature piece of software, and has lots of ins and outs. It's not the easiest thing to use, and has some notoriety as being difficult at times. It also costs money to use anything but the most basic free features. In fact, RSS syndication, and thus the ability to get WoW Insider syndicated on a GuildPortal site, is part of the pay only package. Because of this, we can only take you half way – right up to where I get an error saying I need to pay.
How to syndicate WoW Insider on your GuildPortal website
1. Login as an administrator. 2. Click on the Control Panel link located at the top of the webpage.
3. Click on the "Site Pages" link located on the left hand side of the webpage.
4. Click on a page, such a "Home".
5. Click on the link named "Add Content" which is located near the top of the webpage, just above all your pages content items.
6. A window will open, asking you to choose what type of content you want to add. Fill it in as pictured above. 7. Click the "Save" button. 8. This is where you'll need to pay for the site for things to work. What you'll want to do next is click the "Edit Content" link of the content you just added. Another window will open up. There, you want to type in the RSS feed URL for WoW Insider, which is http://www.wowinsider.com/rss.xml . After that, you'll be done, and see a WoW Insider feed on your guild's website!
Starting early yesterday afternoon and into the night, quite a few servers have unlocked the 2nd phase of the Shattered Sun Offensive at the Isle of Quel'danas, known as the Sun's Reach Sanctum (We can't confirm for sure who was first, although rumor has it that Cenarius was a strong contender, and I'm sure accounts will differ unless Blizzard decides to establish a tracking page like they did for the Ahn'Qiraj event). This means a new building under control of the offensive , a tradeskill vendor (no ability to repair just yet, alas), and a handful of new daily quests dedicated to unlocking the 3rd phase, the Sun's Reach Armory.
This quest, while technically part of the 2nd phase of the Shattered Sun Offensive, does not appear immediately at the beginning of the Offensive. Instead, your server must complete the portal from Quel'danas to Shattrath by doing the Intercepting the Mana Cells quest.
Once you've unlocked the portal, a new NPC, Astromancer Darnarian, will be found inside the Sanctum building alongside the other daily quest givers. When you talk to him, he will complain that no-one appreciates the effort that it takes to do Translocations, and demands that you educate yourself by taking an Astromancer's Crystal and attuning it to 3 different places: The Bloodcrystal to the west, the Dawning Square portal to the south, and the naga shrine at Greengill Coast to the southeast. Be sure to use the crystal at each area to get your credit.
The Bloodcrystal can be found due west of the Sanctum, at about location 42,35.
The Greengill Coast point will take a bit of riding, it's on the east coast of the Island, about halfway down the length of the island, at about location 61,62.
The red dots on the map below give the approximate locations of each point, or you can click the map for a link to a larger map by Wowhead user Norrec:
Once you've gotten your readings, return to the Astromancer. You'll get 11 gold 59 silver and Darnarian's Scroll of Teleportation, which will send you back to Shattrath City when you use it on the Isle of Quel'danas. It's only good for one use, but fortunately, you can do this quest to get a new one every day. Unfortunately, it's also unique, so you can't just hoard the scrolls for a rainy day. Still, it should at least be useful for heading back to Shattrath should you need to repair until the Sun's Reach Armory is retaken or get started on the new Shattrath dailies. Not bad for a bit of riding. If you need more information on this quest, check Wowwiki and Wowhead.
The second phase of quest and NPC progression on the Isle of Quel'danas began a couple days ago on the US PvE PTR. Yesterday I covered the retaking of Sun's Reach Sanctum and the second phase is all about the building just across the road, the Sun's Reach Armory. The Armory is infested with demons, as you can see in the screenshot, and the new daily quests are all about driving them away.
First of all, let me state that the daily quests from phase one were still available on the PTR even after the Sanctum was taken from the Wretched. The names and quest text are a little different to reflect the changed state of the Isle, but the quest objectives and rewards remain exactly the same. It should be safe to assume that this trend will continue throughout every stage of the Shattered Sun Offensive.
Here's a little something to brighten up your Monday. Sharp-eyed tipster Aikiwoce spotted this dead ringer for a certain object that rhymes with "freighted D'Artagnan noob" outside the Stormwind gates, presumably as part of the "Love Is in the Air" holiday that kicked off today. I love Blizzard and their cultural references. Has anyone else seen something interesting?
Gallery: Love is in the Air
SInce we're on the subject of real world references in WoW, check out this gallery of curiously familiar names of NPC's in game.
Gallery: Funny names gallery
Also, players dressed as their favorite WoW characters at last year's Blizzcon.
Gallery: BlizzCon Costumes
And how can we forget people dressed up as their favorite characters from their favorite book/movie/tv series/game at last year's DragonCon.
Seeing as food has been on our minds this week at WoW Insider (with both the new Well Fed Buff column and Maureen's World of WarCrafts), I figured we'd give the foodies in the audience something to pine for this week. Expect more big pointy sharp things only available from late game raids next week.
"If you spend at least 5 seconds eating, you will become Very Happy for 1 hour." What does Very Happy mean? Nothing, except that you get a buff that lasts for one hour.
Does the buff do anything? Nope, nothing percievable. Does it at least kick off a negative debuff? Nope. Does it replace one of your current buffs? Nope. Is there any reason to eat this cake at all, besides that it gives you a useless Happy buff? Of course! It's cake!
If you are the kind of person who leaves comments on a Phat Loot post complaining that a useless piece of food is not Phat Loot, go eat some of this cake. Hopefully it will make you Very Happy, and then we'll all be that way.
How to Get It: This recipe is actually new in 2.3-- it's a reward hidden in the food given to you by the cooking daily quests in Shattrath. When you finish the daily quest, you get Crates of Meat and Barrels of Fish, and this recipe, which is BoP, will be randomly hidden in one of those from time to time.
And despite coming from a high level daily quest, the cake is actually only level 1, so it's pretty easy to make: you need your Simple Flour (8), 4 Ice Cold Milk, some Mild Spices (4), 8 Small Eggs, a whole Flask of Port (yowza! you can get those from most of the bartenders in the major cities), and 3 Mageroyal. Which means that there is apparently no chocolate in this cake at all, and that means that, even though I shudder to say it (as much as I like Portal, I think the meme died about a week ago), the cake is indeed a lie.
But it is tasty. And who doesn't want a Very Happy buff?
Getting Rid of It: A vendor will give you 1s 25c for it, but a better option would be to just go around passing them out, or give them away to guildies as birthday presents for the next year. I've heard rumors that people don't know what they are, and that they've been selling on the AH for hundreds of gold, but if you were unlucky enough to sell out for one of these, just remember that there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying 'till you run out of cake.
If you venture to the western edge of Zangarmarsh, on the far side of Marshlight Lake, you'll encounter this unusual monument. A portal, not so unlike the Dark Portal we entered the world through -- though this other portal is clearly in some state of disrepair. WoWwiki informs us that this is one of the dimensional gateways Magtheridon used to summon demons from the Twisting Nether, at least until Illidan shut down the gateway. Thanks to Hunterbert of Chou Hadra on Alonsus for sharing this snippet of history with us!
Do you have a screenshot that captures a moment in Azerothinan (or Outlandian) history? We'd like to see it on Around Azeroth! All you have to do is e-mail aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your screenshot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could find your pictures and story featured next!
I will come right out and say it - it is just plain silly how incredibly under appreciated mages are. I'm not referring to how they are treated on the forums for how much DPS they can dish out or what absurdly high numbers they can crit up to. No, I'm talking about the services that mages do for others on a daily basis. As illustrated in today's comic, they open rifts through the fabric of reality to help you get around quickly and conveniently, and far more amazing then that, they give you food. How can you beat that? Next time you are munching down on a health and mana rejuvenating slice of conjured heaven, take a moment to give some kind words or a hug to your guild's resident chef/chauffeur. Every time you thank a mage, an angel gets its wings. (and then a warlock rips them off and sets them on fire, but that is a fairy tale for another time)
This is the first comic Ive done that draws from a source outside of the Warcraft Universe, and I'm hoping that the majority of our readers will "get it" even with the external reference. The way I see it, we WoW players do not live in a gaming vacuum - we are aware of other worlds out there beyond our cherished Azeroth, and possibly even spend time in them ourselves. As always, I will keep a close eye on the comments to gauge how well this little diversion came across. If you like it, you will let me know. If you don't, you will let me know even more verbosely. But hey, at least we have our new comment system so you can all show how much you agree/disagree with each others opinions, and all this feedback will help shape the comics to come. At least, until you all figure out my home address and assemble the lynch mob. Let me just state for the record that I'd hate to be burned at the stake... again.
Every Tuesday, Arthur E. "Arturis" Orneck posts another hand drawn snapshot into his demented little mind, because he learned way back in kindergarten that its polite to share, unless what you are trying to share is lycanthropy, vampirism or the T-Virus.
Many of us have stepped through the Dark Portal into Outland, and in that time dozens of players have mastered the content available there.Now that we have BlizzCon in our sites, all eyes seem to be on what our next expansion will be.As Chris Metzen mentioned at the last BlizzCon, Outland is peppered with portals, each with the potential to open another world for us to explore.
I personally know of two such dead portals, empty and devoid of life.The first is in Zangarmarsh, at the appropriately named Portal Clearing, and the second is in Nagrand.Have you found any other portals in your time in Outland?If so, do you think that the locations of the portals could be a clue to what lies behind them?Going with this theory, we might postulate that the Zangarmarsh portal might lead to the Maelstrom, since that zone is riddled with naga.What do you think?
Recently, I wrote a post on Rogues having trade windows opened up on them without so much as a word. As I suspected, many other Rogues out there indeed have the same problem. Of course, many had their own ways of dealing with it like picking the box, but not hitting trade until there was a tip in the window. Another idea was just keeping all trades off in their options so that people couldn't open up trades with them in the first place. All of these are things that I've tried from time to time with varying levels of success.
What I didn't expect, however, was the sheer amount of people who jumped in and brought up the similar plights that Mages and Warlocks face on a daily basis. As I've got a L59 Warlock and a L61 Mage, trust me when I say that I completetly understand and appreciate what you all go through with the requests you get. I'm not even able to portal others to Shattrath yet on my Mage, but anytime I'm playing her, I almost immediately get asked to open a portal there for someone anyway. Now, nobody has opened a trade window on me without asking and grunted out "food/water" as yet, but I've definitely gotten the tells demanding that I make food or water for them, as opposed to asking nicely.
![[Mages cannot summon either cats or cakes. It would be cool if we could, though.]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.wowinsider.com/media/2007/06/conjure225.jpg)
Recently, I wrote a post on 
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