+22 Intellect is amazing.

Give it a look here, and feel free to post your thoughts!

Honor system reward item’s rank requirement will now be based on a characters highest lifetime rank rather than the character’s current rank.

What does this mean? A lot! Once you have achieve Grand Marshal, you will no longer need to work to maintain it. That is, provided you buy all the items you need, you will be able to use them for the rest of your life.

If it a good change? Casual gamers would certainly welcome it, and so would anyone who want to do something other than PvP. However, don't expect getting there to be easy, this will encourage a new wave of PvPers, which will at least initially make honor points worth even less. Every week, there's still a set amount at each rank, so don't expect to get to Grand Marshall any time soon.

COmments, responses? POst them here.

As many of you know, the next patch will include Darkmoon Fairies, a group of exotic merchants that venture around the world. Blizzard has finally released their features:

• Many exotic vendors travel with Silas Darkmoon, offering adventurers hard-to-find items from the far corners of Azeroth.

• Players can earn tickets by gathering trade goods for Darkmoon Faire's vendors, which can then be turned in for items and special equipment.

• Strange sets of cards have been broken up and scattered across Azeroth. Players who are lucky enough to collect a complete set of these will recieve an epic item.

Interesting, read the rest here.

I started working my way through Half-life 2, so don't spoil the ending for me, and I picked up a copy of Jade Empire for the Xbox. All great games -- then Blizzard has to go and release the damn Battlegrounds patch. Now, rather than working, you can find me slaughtering Horde scum in Warsong Gulch or desperately begging players to go to the troll caves in Alterac Valley because I want that sweet, sweet, blue crossbow. Damn you Blizzard! Let go of my soul.

If you haven't tried it out it, go ahead now.

Some have asked about an expansion and what it might hold. I wanted to let players know that it is in the works, and we’ll release details as soon as we can.

The sentence confirms the rumor that the expansion is indeed in the works, and will most likely go by the name 'The Burning Crusade'. Recall our account here.

Blizzard games have done it in the past! Remember the Korean man who dies after playing Starcraft consecutively for over 50 hours? Well World of Warcraft is the new culprit.

A thoughtless couple in their 20s who left their four-month old daughter at home while they played Internet computer games at a nearby PC café have been booked by police after the child died.

According to Incheon Police Station on Tuesday, a 29-year-old man husband identified by his family name of Yu and his wife put their four-month daughter in the bedroom of their home and went to a neighborhood PC café at around 4:00 p.m. on May 24 to play the online game "World of Warcraft.

Ladies and gentlemen, remember, your children are more important than killing Ragnoras. It's true! Read the rest of the news article here.

• Blackwing Lair
• Better Honor Ranking Display
• New item rewards for Warsong Gulch
• Movement slowing spells and attacks will now cause damage to targets under the effect of Blessing of Freedom.

And, no, there's no Shaman nerf. Read the rest here.

To survive Molten Core, you're going to need fire resistance, a lot of fire resistance. Yet, while much of the gear can be found in low level instances, most players tend to throw them away, not knowing how use resistance will be in end level raids.

Nightmyre has written up a list of caster gear you should get, and where to get them, to succeed is this high level instance.

• Giving a maximum cap on the amount of PvP items a player can get for reputation to discourage ninja looting of PvP rewards.
• Introduction of offensive airstrikes.
• The elemental bosses will attack after 10 minutes of idle wandering.
• NPCs will not longer assist players to prevent trains.

Most of these changes I agree with, but I have no idea what putting a cap will do in terms of discouraging ninja looting. The new law will probably disrupt combat even further, as players who achieved their loot limit spring all the way back to base.

• Wow Windows Media Player Skin
• Wow Windows XP Theme
  

Interesting concept.

Well folks, that's only to be expected. Keep in mind the rankings  are done on a relative system. With the release of Battlegrounds, thousands of people who never PvPed in their lives suddenly became hardcore PvPers. Battleground honor bonuses were added... So gaining 30,000 contribution points would be like getting 3000 the week before...

A GM confirmed today that this feature was intentional. Though keep in mind, GM's are often not that well informed!

Caster equipment are a rather confusing bunch, some have lots of extra stats, some come with healing or damage boosts, and some grant mana regeneration every five seconds... what's best?

Nightmyre, long time veteran of raid instances, has decided to post a comparison for the end game. It well reasoned, and well worth reading.

So what is this Burning Crusade, a new game? A new World of Warcraft expansion pack? We bring you this quote from Blizzard website

Once Sargeras saw that his armies were amassed and ready to follow his every command, he launched his raging forces into the vastness of the Great Dark. He referred to his growing army as the Burning Legion. To this date, it is still unclear how many worlds they consumed and burned on their unholy Burning Crusade across the universe.

So, it's almost certain that this new title in going to based in the Warcraft universe. Noting that its very unlikely for Blizzard to be creating Warcraft 4 so soon, all evidence points to a new World of Warcraft expansion pack.

Check out the evidence, including an exact quote on the search results (we cannot link them as the patents office's search URLs expire), click here. Be sure to discuss your thoughts! Kudos to SCL for the news.

Be sure to answer, for the results will be used as a guide to see which battleground will cover most of our strategies for!

After seeing the screenshots and movies of the new Starcraft Ghost, are you hyped about the game again?
Completely!	73	21%
A little	113	32%
Not Really	142	41%
SC: Ghost?	22	6%
TOTAL	350	100

In our editorial last week, we pointed out that the extremely long delay has killed the hype about Starcraft: Ghost ... and it certainly looks like its true.

"SC:G looks okay... but only okay, and i dont plan on buying a game that looks "okay" even if its a starcraft game. I LOVE starcraft, but i am no where near excited for SC:G."

"I'm not that excited. It is now on one of those games that I will wait on buying for a few weeks to see how it is rated amongst everyone. That is bad news on blizzard's part if a good chunk of their customers have similar opinions like me."

With almost half have of our viewers treating SC:Ghost with apathy, and that's on a Blizzard fansite, it doesn't spell too well for the newest title.

If you really do need shards, stack all your items in your last backpack, i.e. In reverse order. Shards you gain start at the first item slot in the first backpack, replacing whatever item was there before!

To launch us off today, we write up an indepth survey of the two new battlegrounds available. For one of the first choices you'll have to make is, which battleground is right for you? Travelling between the two takes time, and you want to be in heat of the action, so it'd be great to know which battleground is right for you.

• Choosing the right Battleground

• World of Warcraft V1.5.0 Patch

Thanks to Fileplanet for providing the link.

Thus, want to play WoW cheap? Get a friend in China and import over a copy of the game! 

• Warsong Gulch Rewards
• Alterac Valley Rewards

So, indeed, PvP will gain your permanent items, a great feature to the delight of PvP fanatics.

Nevertheless, I have made some time for World of Warcraft, and there's some things I'd like to present to you.

The first is a semi-long write up I made recently regarding many people's complaints of Blizzard's lack of end-game content. This write up is primarily aimed at people who in fact have at least a few hours a day to dedicate to the game and the reasons why they should not feel as though there is nothing for them to do. The article can be found here. Please feel free to add your comments.

Next, my guild on Warsong, RedRum, has recently taken down the God of Fire himself: Ragnaros. It took a few weeks of practice, but in the end, he was plummeled into oblivion. It was a very exciting and amazing battle. For my efforts, I recevied the best Shaman / Paladin shield in the game to date, Malistar's Defender. Tomorrow, Saturday, will mark our first attempt at farming the entire instance in one day. So far, we've taken down all bosses minus Ragnaros in less than 6 hours. The thread, a few words, and some screenshots can be found here. I'd love to hear about your encounters with Ragnaros and would be more than happy to help out in any way I can if you're having trouble, but I can not spoil the encounter for you :p

Finally, I ran across a short preview of the upcoming Blackwing Lair which you might find interesting. I am very much looking forward to conquering this new instance. Our guild becomes better equipped every week, and I know once this comes out, we will be ready to face the new and exciting challenges. Take a sneak-peak here.

I hope you enjoy those little snippets, and I will be sure to bring more information and exclusive content soon!

• Gamespot Best of E3 Awards
• IGN Best of E3 Awards 

Starcraft: Ghost was nominated for best X-Box game by Gamespot, but was outpaced by King Under Fire.

• Blizzard has confirmed a second time that Mages will get invisibility back in some form.
• Don't panic if your not getting your share of contribution points in the Test Realm, the big is confirmed.
• New information of Zul'Gurub:
  
  It's being designed as a "casual raid instance", I suppose. You don't need 40 people to take on Zul'Gurub -- just 20, and you can still kill with less. It will not be a long, 14-hour affair; the developers are shooting for a 2-hour experience from start to finish. It should give some worthy loot and present an experience for those who don't have much time but still want to have a more "end-game" experience.

Sounds good.