The new plushies I ordered from Blizzard came in today.  The [Gryphon Hatchling] and [Wind Rider Cub] are just so adorable!

And, here’s my entire WoW plushie collection:

That’s all for now. No news yet today.

/logout

By no means am I an expert audiophile, nor a sound engineer.  I am a gamer and entertainment enthusiast who likes the most realism he can get in sound.   This review is written as such.   If you’re looking for a professional reviewer, look elsewhere.  I will be as objective as possible.

Ever since it was announced last August, I’ve been anticipating the availability of the Creative Labs WoW headset.  Today, I finally received mine.      I ordered mine through Amazon.com on Thursday for a retail of $159.99, and after overnight shipping, it came to $181.95.  Your shipping cost may vary and tax of course, depending on where you live. Continue Reading »

The maker of Raid Eats made another parody of the popular Good Eats.  Give this one a look.

Bullworth is at it again!
In World of Warcraft food is everything. At least it’s a way to be popular. Chef Bullworth slices into the [Recipe: Delicious Chocolate Cake] and its happiness-inducing side effects.

Well, I just left the PTR, and it seems Blizzard couldn’t leave things alone.  Those Commendations of Service that used to give 1850 honor points, now only give 185 honor points.  So much for changing out all of our gear after 3.3.3.  Now, when I turn in all of my battleground marks, I’ll have about 54,000 honor instead of 540,000 honor.  Leave it to Blizzard to tease us and now take it away.

Bah,  makes you want to cry in your [Kungaloosh].

OK well, some new thoughts on the latest in 3.3.3.  First of all, no, I have no idea when 3.3.3 is being released.  I’m hoping it isn’t released too soon, as it does need work. I logged into the PTR again yesterday, and a lot of my addons are still broken. 

Logging in to the PTR, I see they finally implemented trading in marks of honor for Commendation of Service.  I’m a little disappointed, in that you can only hold 10 at once, so you have to trade 10 marks, use the Commendations, get more, use them again, lather, rinse, repeat, up until you hit the honor cap of 75,000.  I’m also disappointed they didn’t raise the honor cap.  Also, while the tooltip says you redeem them for 2000 honor, it only yields 1850 honor.  I don’t know if that is intended, or if it’s a bug.  We’ll see. 

Boomkins are getting a buff in 3.3.3…yay!   I’m not going through all the math and numbers, but in a nutshell, [Starfall] and [Nature's Grasp] are changing.  Starfall will  give about 2.5x more damage per star than before, and Nature’s Grasp will now have 3 charges per cast.  What that means is, after it roots someone, if they break out of the roots, it will root them again, up to 2 more times.  This will definitely help us out in PvP, allowing us more chance to make some distance between us and melee.

That’s all for now, I know I’ve been slacking.  I’ll try to do better.

Logging out

Today the newest patch, 3.3.3 went up on the PTR, and there are notes available.  I’m not going to reprint them here, but you can find them here.

I will however touch on some things and give my thoughts.  First of all, the PVP changes.  THANK GOD!  No more of those damn marks of honor to have to collect and have cluttering my currency tab.  I’ve been trying to farm marks for the PVP mounts, and it’s annoying as hell.  Instead of marks of honor, all items will be bought with honor points, like we use now for gear.  To compensate, honor points for Honorable Kills will be doubled, as well as all other honor gains for completing objectives like capturing a base or destroying a tower.  For those not level 80 yet, the honor gains will be offset by halving the amount of XP gained.  Also, honor from completing weekly quests in Wintergrasp will be reduced by 50%, to offset the other honor gains.

Since of course you’ll probably have a ton of leftover marks you can’t use, you’ll be able to turn the marks in to your faction’s pvp quest givers, presumably for honor points, since Blizzard hasn’t elaborated.  Also I am hoping they will raise the honor cap, but I’m not holding my breath.

Also, no longer will you have a specific PVP daily to do.  Instead they are copying the Random Dungeon finder to make the Random Battleground finder.    The notes say that only a group of 5 can queue together.  I’m not sure if that means you have to premake your group, or if it’ll find random players to group you with like the Dungeon finder.

I have some mixed feelings about all of this.  I’m glad they are getting rid of the marks, as they were a pain in the ass, but the new Random Battleground finder could make things more difficult.  We will have to see how it goes. I’m downloading the PTR as we speak, and copied my main over to the PTR.  I’ll check it out and see what is up with the finder tool.

Also, I noticed that the notes say [Titansteel Bar] will no longer have a cooldown.  GREAT news for my hunter/engineer.  Making the [Mechano-hog]  just got a lot easier, of course also that means prices will plummet for titansteel, so the resale prices of those bikes will go down as well.

A couple other things I like.  I like the fact that now they’ve increased the dungeon deserter timer to 30 minutes.  That will hopefully cut back on the people who drop from dungeons prematurely.  I also like that they added the Authenticator input box to the same screen as the main login, instead of the box popping up seperately.  Of course that only happens if you have the authenticator tied to your account.

Well, I’m going to try to get to the PTR and I’ll be able to answer some of the above ambiguities about the PVP.  [EDIT:  After about an hour and a half of downloading and patching, I finally got onto the PTR]

I tested the group queue for Battlegrounds, and it seems that it doesn’t require you to have a group of 5 to queue.  I think it’ll not let you into a BG until you have a group of 5 though.  I don’t know.  Will require further testing.

Also, one very cool thing for us Alchemists (that is, if it stays) Frozo the Renowned in Dalaran  has [Frost Lotus] for sale at a little over 3g per.  Seems to be unlimited.  I don’t know if this will become permanent, but I hope so.

A lot of my addons broke, and I was getting a ton of errors popping up.  Hopefully those will be fixed as well.

Patch 3.3.3 seems like it could be interesting.  It’ll be worth watching out for.

Tonight about an hour ago, Theshat and myself completed [To Honor One's Elders].  We completed the dungeons tonight with some help of a few friends we made back during Brewfest.  Also a friend we made from Hallow’s End helped us with a couple of them.

That’s the fastest we’ve ever completed a meta for a world event.  It took us 4 days, from Sunday to tonight (Wednesday).  Next up is Noblegarden, which I completed last year but will help Theshat complete, then all we have left is Children’s week and Midsummer Fire Festival, and we’ll have completed [What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been].  I’m looking forward to my 310% speed [Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake].  Woohoo!

Ok, I saw this today on WoW.com and had to post it.  Too funny.  Great parody of Good Eats.

I got a twitter on this today.  I just had to share it.

If you’re not familiar with Boom De Yada, it’s a lyric from a song called I love the world that the Discovery Channel made and used for their advertising campaign in 2008 and 2009.   People all over started making and posting their own versions on YouTube, and the Discovery Channel encouraged more, and even asked people to post theirs as a video response to their original.

Yesterday was the official start of the Lunar Festival. All across Azeroth are the Elders that are to be honored, from the Horde to Alliance, Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend, and various dungeons. Tonight I heard on [2:Trade] someone ask why there are elders in Northrend, but none in Outland? Well it’s simple really. The Elders are all from Azeroth, and Outland is not Azeroth, it’s Draenor. The Lunar Festival is an Azerothian festival.

So, tonight Theshat and I got a few of the achievements done. [Elders Of The Alliance] (both of us), [Elune's Blessing] (both of us), [50 Coins Of Ancestry] (me), [25 Coins Of Ancestry] (him), [Elders Of The Horde] (him), [Elders Of Kalimdor] (him), and the ones for the fireworks. I had done some of them already last year.

Tomorrow we’re going to try to knock out as many of the rest as we can. Some of the Northrend dungeon ones we’ll have to group for with others, but the old world ones we can do ourselves.

Well, that’s all for now. More tomorrow