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Ghostcrawler, when not directly occupied with the pack of idiots harassing him on the Damage Dealing forums, stopped by the Healing forums this past month to share some information on how healing is likely to change in Cataclysm. Of particular interest is Blizzard’s changing design philosophy with respect to what makes healing challenging. Right now tank avoidance is so high that, as GC’s previously observed, bosses have to hit like a freight train in order to pose any threat to tank survivability at all. Between that and what’s universally acknowledged as the “never running OOM” ethos of Wrath, the unfortunate effect has been healers spamming their largest heals on anyone within range. The model that Blizzard’s looking to move towards is getting a test run of sorts in Icecrown Citadel — lower tank avoidance, bosses hitting for more reasonable amounts, and — in Cataclysm — higher health overall. In other words, we’ll be

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The story of the Culling of Stratholme is cool, the first time you do it. However after about the hundreth time it gets to be a bit much. And thanks to the random heroic dungeon finder, I practically have Arthas‘ speech memorized now; he and I yell in sync at the end of each run “To the ends of the earth!” Be honest, I know you do, too. What has to be the most requested feature of this dungeon — the ability to skip the long and repetitive story — isn’t coming anytime soon. When there was some discussion about this in the general forms earlier this week, Eyonix appeared and enlightened us as to Blizzard’s thoughts on the matter: We agree, but unfortunately with the current tech/flagging that exists in regards to this — it’s just not possible for the game to recognize this sort of thing and allow for a bypass. It’s always a possibility for the future though. So for the time being we’ll have to live with this, but at

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According to a post on IGN Comics, Blizzard’s Warcraft and Starcraft series of comic books, published by Wildstorm (which in turn is owned by DC comics, owned by Time Warner) are from now on to be published as stand alone graphic novels. The current World of Warcraft comic will end, according to the article, with a special issue arriving in stores while Starcraft will end on issue 7. I have mixed feelings about this. The World of Warcraft comic has gotten, shall we say, mixed reviews. As a long time comics geek, I had high hopes for it, since it was written by Walt Simonson (one of my personal heroes), justly famous in comics circles for his runs on Thor, Manhunter and Orion. The comic didn’t always work for me (fanboy though I am, even I couldn’t digest a ‘diet of steel’ so to speak) but I’m still sad to see the monthly title end before splitting into the Horde and Alliance versions we were expecting. Hopefully we’ll still get to see those

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We were all a little baffled at the discovery of a 28 day delay in Icecrown Citadel before the second ‘wing’ of the instance unlocked. A whole month? That’s a really long time, and if it were 28 days between every ‘wing’ opening, we wouldn’t be facing Arthas until early April. Raiders wouldn’t even have access to hard modes until shortly after that. That was not a particularly pleasing discovery. Luckily, Daelo has hit the forums to tell us that it’s not going to be that way between every wing. The first wing has an extra long delay because of the holidays, and each of them afterwards will be faster. He also adds some details about an increased number of attempts on the end bosses: In other news, the initial number of attempts to defeat the major bosses at the end of each wing of Icecrown Citadel has been increased by 5. This means you’ll have 10 attempts for Professor Putricide, 15 attempts when The Crimson Halls are available,

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All the World’s a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles. Roleplaying is a journey of trust you take with strangers. You may now and then start out with a group of people you know in real life, but for the most part, the people you roleplay with have no idea who you really are, or why you are sitting here at the computer. You can tell them if you want to, but most people don’t ask. Roleplayers tend to keep personal details private, and don’t intrude on one another’s space. Besides, other roleplayers don’t necessarily care that much about who you “really are” either. They’re there to get to know your character, not you as a person, unless your character first makes a very good impression and they decide that they actually want to be friends as real people. Even though you respect each other as people who share the same interest,

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Thanks to an obliging (and naked) dwarf rogue in Dalaran, I was able to obtain my Pilgrim title without much trouble. Well, trying to get the Turkinator on the first day was definitely “much trouble”, but waiting a few days for Tirisfal Glades to empty out proved to be the less frustrating course. For my alts, I was happy just leveling my cooking on the cheap… and getting a level here and there. Pilgrim’s Bounty was a great opportunity for easily working on what I consider a necessary secondary profession. This first instance of Blizzard’s version of the U.S.’s Thanksgiving Day holiday didn’t have any bosses with fun loot, and wasn’t included as part of the meta, but it was casual fun without much time expended. And I am very fond of my suicidal turkey, though disappointed he didn’t try to hook up with the Lonely Turkey. Were you able to do all you wanted to in this holiday? Did you enjoy it or is there something you wish they

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 is a new song by Gigi and Nation. (Nation was once Abandonation, but I’m not sure if the label change is purposeful, or just a hip contraction.) The video was created by WoPairs, who shows an excellent eye for character portraiture in this piece. The song is dedicated to those who seek out achievements to the cost of all else. I’m not much of an achievement guy, so I found the send-up of it to be pretty amusing. I guess I see how some folks are really into them, but achievements feel like one really long grind to me. Notably, this piece is an entirely original song. And while I always feel out of my depth evaluating rap, I definitely salute Gigi and Nation for expanding in that direction. It’s fantastic to see the pair growing as artists, and creating new art in the musical belf-o-sphere. I’m interested in seeing what they might do next, if this video’s success encourages them to keep creating new stuff.

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15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com’s look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes — from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you’d like to hear more about. Safety is serious business on US Feathermoon (RP). The Guildwatch, Feathermoon’s Alliance global defense network of guilds and individuals, strives seven days a week to protect Alliance towns and territories from Horde attack. Sound like something that’s taken pretty seriously? That would be affirmative. Says Guildwatch leader Mixler of the group’s some 400 members, “Most of the major players Alliance-side have been members at one point or another, all of the Horde PvPers have fought us, and I believe we’re still the largest organization on Feathermoon.” While Feathermoon is not a PvP realm (it is one of the game’s original realms, created before there were such things as RP-PvP realms), world

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Elnia continues posting some interesting (and complicated) insight into the World of Warcraft over at the Pink Pigtail Inn. This time, it’s about what she calls “rent seeking,” which isn’t about trying to find the money to pay for your apartment so much as it’s about individuals petitioning authorities (the government, or in this case Blizzard) for their own income. The post dabbles with some complicated market theory, but in the end, the conclusion is this: while players have definitely petitioned Blizzard for changes to their own class, they have generally stayed away from asking for more money, or changes to the rules that would grant it to them. In general, players are fine with Blizzard staying hands-off of the various in-game economies running in Azeroth. As the commenters over there say, there’s a good reason for that, and it’s because most of the economic play in WoW is completely optional. Aside from repair costs (which can be high

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At his drake’s request, Amathyst of <The Stormwind Reserve> on Barthilas rode up to visit Alexstrasza and introduce her to one of her many children. Unfortunately for Amathyst’s mount, it turns out he inherited most of his characteristics from his much less impressive father. This reminds me of a pit bull/basset hound mix I once met. It would have been a very intimidating guard dog were it not for the fact that it didn’t come up to my knees and preferred crashing into people’s ankles to attacking them. Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word

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