Breakfast Topic: Skeletons in the closet

It looks like Blizzard is busting out the ban hammer in full force. Last week is was on point sellers (and buyers) in the arena this week they're bashing down Glider users. There was a lot of noise on the forums last week from folks that felt they were unjustly punished wow gold. I'm sure we'll hear similar stories as a fallout from the glider events.

It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy all over when cheaters get their due. But it also makes me worry that the witch hunt might go too far. Here at WoW Insider we make it a point to be kind of hush hush about exploits cheap wow gold, since we have no desire to lead anyone astray. (This is why we said very little about things like the Fire Nova Totem or Snake Trap exploits). The way I see it is if you don't do anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about. We've all repeatedly agreed to the terms of use.

About the Bloggers: Alex Ziebart

Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves wow gold, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers. What do you do for WoW Insider?
I'm primarily a weekend blogger for WoW Insider, but I also stick my nose in during the week when I can. I am also a columnist for Hybrid Theory and wow I take turns with Elizabeth Wachowski writing Know Your Lore.For the Horde or Glory to the Alliance?
Glory to the Alliance! While orcs bug me for some reason I can't decipher, I don't really have anything against the Horde. I started playing Alliance because that's where my friends rolled and we started a pretty awesome guild there, so I stuck around and came to love it. If those people had rolled Horde instead buy wow gold, I might be playing there. Both factions have their own feel, and they're both very cool.

No new character slots for Wrath of the Lich King, says Bornakk

If you're planning to make a Death Knight on your favorite server, and you're an altoholic (I myself am guilty on both counts) world of warcraft gold, you've probably already thought about your delimma, and Bornakk drove home the point today: There are still no plans to make extra character slot for WoTLK. Just like the problem you may have had deciding what characters to delete to make your Draenei or Blood Elf, you'll have to make the same decision again.

I suppose it's understandable. I'm sure it would be a rather large jump in server storage space needed to give everyone a massive amount of extra characters buy wow gold. Still, It's going to be tough for a lot of people to delete or transfer a character so they can play their new Death Knight with their friends, I imagine.

Bornakk does point out that at least, with the level 55 creation level, you can start the Death Knight on a seperate server and get a feel for it before deciding if you want to delete or transfer a character on your main server. Still, I know that half the fun for me is getting a good name reserved for my character wow, so I've personally already deleted a lowbie Draenei Paladin from my main server in order to create a placeholder character with my chosen name.

Around Azeroth: A light in dark places

Finlome of Firetree appears to be trying a new method of killing Onyxia. Instead of bringing a raid of forty people, he's decided it would be best to bring himself and a torch. This may sound crazy, but hear me out -- Onyxia's Lair has over fifty dragons in a cave with no apparent ventilation world of warcraft gold. That thing's got to be FILLED with methane by now. Torch + methane gas + fire resist gear = free Tier 2 helm. It's brilliant! No, wait, it's the dumbest plan I've ever come up with. But it's still less painful than running that instance twenty weeks in a row waiting for Bloodfang.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.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. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it buy wow gold. And please, if you've got a suggestion for a new ending joke, write it in the comments, or else I'll subject you to samples of Around Azeroth Nigerian scam e-mails!

Democrat Obama Intensifies Criticism of Republican Rival

May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama intensified his criticism of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain with the approach of the May 20 Democratic presidential primaries that may allow him to claim he's locked up a majority of delegates picked by voters.
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Campaigning in Oregon today wow, Obama linked McCain, 71, to President George W. Bush's record on everything from gasoline prices and the war in Iraq to tax cuts for the wealthy ``that never trickle down to you.''

Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton, 60, of New York, joined Obama today in turning her fire on McCain.

Campaigning through central Kentucky, Clinton said McCain's economic agenda is ``nothing but four more years of George Bush economics: Corporate special interests first, middle class families last, borrow from China and stick our children and grandchildren with the bill,'' she said.

Obama now has 1,610 of the 1,627 pledged delegates needed to gain a majority, according to an Associated Press count. Polls suggest Clinton will win Kentucky, which has 51 pledged delegates at stake. Obama is leading in Oregon, which has 52. Obama is likely to take away more than the 23 he needs to claim a majority of pledged delegates under the party's apportionment rules.

Obama also has 294.5 of the officials and officeholders designated as superdelegates, compared with 276.5 for Clinton, according to lists and announcements by both campaigns. Obama, who needs a total of 2,026 delegates to secure the nomination world of warcraft gold, is previewing his general election campaign strategy against McCain.

Meeting With Iran

During a town hall forum in Roseburg, Oregon, today, Obama defended his position that he would be willing to meet unconditionally with the leaders of hostile nations such as Iran during his first year in office.

``If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the United States then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy because that's what he did with Khrushchev,'' said Obama, referring to the former Soviet leader.

The McCain campaign quickly fired back.

``Senator Obama is missing the point,'' said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. His ``pledge to unconditionally bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the world stage isn't `new politics,' it's incredibly weak judgment,'' said Bounds, referring to Iran's president.

Four More Years

McCain is ``promising four more years of the exact same foreign policy that George Bush has been perpetrating,'' said Obama, including a war that's cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and which he called ``the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda ever had.''

He also said Osama bin Laden is still sending out videotapes and that Iran poses the greatest threat to Israel and the U.S. in a generation cheap wow gold. ``This is his idea of strong leadership and strong judgment,'' said Obama.

He also attacked McCain on health care, saying he has no plan to cover all Americans and no plan to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to individuals who need it.

The average American family is paying 78 percent more on health care than it was when Bush took office, said Obama. ``He wants to give you the failed'' health care policies of the past eight years, he said.

Two Sides of Coin

``President Bush and Senator McCain are like two sides of the same coin, and it doesn't amount to a whole lot of change,'' Clinton said to cheers and applause from a few hundred supporters at Kentucky State University in Frankfort buy wow gold. ``My top priority is making this economy work for middle-class and working families again.''

Clinton said that while McCain has pledged $100 billion in corporate tax breaks to oil companies and corporations that have profited in Iraq, she would channel the same tax cuts to middle- class families instead. Individuals making more than $250,000 would return to paying the same tax rates as they did under the administration of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, she said.

``We're going to go back to what worked in the 1990s,'' Clinton said.

The Republican National Committee fired back, accusing her of offering costly solutions.

Costly Solutions

``Rather than explain why both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will raise taxes on hardworking Americans, Clinton is launching her own desperate attacks on John McCain,'' said Republican spokesman Alex Conant. ``The Democrats' plans for more taxes, more spending and more regulations will not grow the economy or create jobs.''

Clinton also told supporters in Kentucky that she is leading Obama by more than 40,000 popular votes if ballots cast in Michigan and Florida are included -- and urged supporters to push Democratic leaders to count the votes of the states, which were punished for holding their primaries early.

Clinton, who has lagged behind Obama in fundraising, has spent time trying to fill her campaign coffers in the last few days. In Los Angeles on May 15, she attended an event that brought in $400,000. She raised more than $200,000 in Oregon yesterday, her campaign said.

McCain has no public events today while he sits for interviews and tapes an episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live.

The possible outcomes of Blizzard's Glider lawsuit

Terra Nova put a quick post up about putting the Blizzard vs. WoW Glider case (and the Public Knowledge amicus brief) in the larger context of whether or not End User License Agreements are "good" or "bad," but even better than the post is the comments section. Lots of MMO heavies, including Richard Bartle, show up to break down just what Blizzard is trying to do with their claim against the botting software, and what they might end up doing to the industry at large.

No one is against Blizzard's goal of trying to stop cheaters. But the way Blizzard is going about it puts their stance in jeopardy -- they're saying that cheating in their MMO is a violation of copyright, and that is a completely different issue world of warcraft. Even Bartle himsef says this is an "ends justify the means" argument -- Blizzard is just using the copyright issue to get the judge to say that cheating is bad. As we posted the other day, Public Knowledge believes that any decision that says "yes, Glider breaks copyright law," could then be used as a precedent for calling any EULA violation a copyright violation.

Adam Hyland, in the Terra Nova thread, has the breakdown of outcomes: either a judge rules completely in favor of MDY/Glider (thus leaving every software maker open to EULA violations -- very unlikely), or a judge rules either narrowly in favor of Blizzard (saying that yes, cheating is wrong world of warcraft gold, but it's not a copyright issue), or wholly in favor of Blizzard (which Public Knowledge fears the most -- if breaking the EULA is a copyright violation, everyone who names their character XXNoobz0rXX is breaking copyright law). We'll have to see what comes out of this case, and hope that it's for the best for both Blizzard and their players.

Officers' Quarters: LF Raid Leader PST

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

A few weeks ago, my first and most important suggestion for casual raiding guilds was to find a committed raid leader. These days, however, good raid leaders are even rarer than good tanks. The author of this week's e-mail asks world of warcraft gold, What do you do if your guild doesn't have anyone willing to be the RL?

Dear Scott,

[. . .] My guild, Winding Path, came to be during the MMORPG, Asheron's Call, and has been in existence since February of 2000 (3 months after the retail release of AC). We're a family and friends based guild of roughly 85 casual, playing members whose core belief is friends>lewtz. We've gradually worked our way through Kara and are *finally* making some progress through ZA (slowly, but surely). We have some amazingly talented players, intelligent people, kids as young as 10 who make the adults look like n00bsauce sometimes, and more belly laughs than you can shake a stick at buy wow gold. We may never see Sunwell Plateau until a 4th or 5th expansion ;) , but the points you make in regards to the fun being of the utmost importance was something that I have hammered home in the eight years my guild has entrusted me with the leadership of our family. I thank you for sharing that with the rest of the WoW community, as I fear it is heard far too little.

My greatest issue, however, is one that even after all this time, not even I have been able to resolve. A few months ago, we were forced to terminate the Raid Leader for our guild for several reasons. The biggest issue, though, is that on multiple occasions, he failed to show up for raids without notice, which we forgave and ignored. Unfortunately cheap wow gold, the last time this happened, we learned he had actually been playing his Horde character on another server, running Kara with his other guild. Quite a slap in the face, and well--to me, a definite expression of his disinterest in his position as our RL.

Blizzard cracks down on arena win trading

We already know that Blizzard is tweaking arena rules to make it much tougher to artificially inflate your rating by win trading or buying high ranked teams in Season 4, but it looks like they're starting to take it one step further wow gold, by cracking down on people who indulge in it.

Reports are coming in from the official forums and from other spots around the web of people getting bans or suspensions (generally 72 hours in length) and having their Season 3 arena gear stripped. The bans are even permanent in some cases, such as that of Sinther of Stormscale, whose account was permanently banned when his friend used it to do some win-trading, with the win trading given as the specific reason for his banning cheap wow gold. You can read many of these stories and reports in this forum thread.

Addon Spotlight: OmniCC

Sean is diving, sunning himself and trying to drink all the cervezas in Cozumel this week, so don't feel bad if he doesn't respond to emails and comments. He'll be back in action next week wow, fresh and ready to join the Addon Army's battle for the perfect User Interface!

Today I'm going to feature an addon that I've been using for a long time, but often overlook because it's so simple. It's certainly one of those "fire and forget" addons that you can install and will start functioning right away cheap wow gold. I originally downloaded this one on a whim, without suspecting its potential. OmniCC will add a text cooldown counter to item and spell icons. Simple, right? That's all it does really, nothing fancy, barely any memory use and the ability to have a very easy visual cue to manage your cooldowns. I find this especially helpful when I'm trying to manage cooldowns on my paladin, but having two level 70 paladins might make me biased.

Once you install this, you can access its options menu by using of two commands:

* /occ
* /omnicc

There are a number of options you can fidget with, from font size to colors and scaling. However, I have yet to mess with these, I find this addon works right out of the box.

Although there is a simple visual cue to cooldowns in the default UI, I found that having big numbers on the spell icon, counting down for me, helps to time things buy wow gold. Combined with the swing timer from Quartz, I rarely miss an opportunity to cast a spell or use a cooldown. (Except in the Arena, where I am apparently the food of choice for every class)

That's it folks, short and sweet, check out OmniCC for your cooldown needs. Dismissed!

Ready Check: Applying and Trialling

Ready Check is a twice-weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau wow gold, everyone can get in on the action and gear up people in T6 who then leave for the next rung up the ladder.

Following on from our column about recruiting, in this Ready Check we're going to talk about applying and trialling with a raiding guild. Anyone looking to change guilds and start raiding different content cheap wow gold, or guilds interested in different methods of recruiting and trialling players, read on for more on the subject.

Applying for a new guild can often seem very much like applying for a job, and the interview and trial process also have strong parallels to the real world. Not every raider out there is an experienced job-hunter, so we'll look at a few concepts from the world of work to smooth out your raiding experiences. If this all sounds like too much work for you, bear in mind there are other options out there -- there are more casual raid guilds and alliances who will give you a shot just after a quick chat, for example wow, so whatever your needs in the raiding world there should be something to fit. Finding it, however, isn't easy -- which brings us to our first point.

PTR goes up

Usually Blizzard is pretty definitive when they take something down. However today they've decided to take down the PTR (Public Test Realm) in the morning, and then put it back up early tonight wow gold. I'm reminded of a recent Simpsons episode I watched where Homer is sitting in his hospital bed awaiting a heart bypass surgery and goes "Bed goes up, bed goes down. Bed goes up, bed goes down." PTR goes down, PTR goes up.

All of these announcements come from the same person, Hortus, so it's not an issue of him being confused or anything (unless the whirly jig in his head has gotten to him). Hortus does tell us that they've put it up for "some additional testing cheap wow gold," which really isn't a surprise given it's a test realm.

This probably means that patch 2.4.2 won't go live tomorrow if there is maintenance. Once we know more we'll post and keep you updated.

Ready Check: Felmyst

Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau wow gold, everyone can get in on the action and spend thousands of gold on repairs and consumables. This week, we face an undead lady dragon with serious breath issues.

Felmyst is the third boss in the Sunwell Plateau. As you approach the Brutallus encounter, you see him doing battle with Madrigosa, a blue dragon. Upon defeating Brutallus, Felmyst rises from her corpse in undead form and begins circling around the plain where you fought Brutallus. (She's quite feisty cheap wow gold, and will aggro if some AoE abilities are used while she flies over, so be careful!)

The encounter is an execution fight, and requires a lot of attention throughout from everyone in the raid. In terms of preparation, you don't need any resistance gear for the fight, but having a Cauldron of Arcane Protection will help mitigate some of the raid damage. The most common strategy also relies quite heavily on priests' Mass Dispel ability, but before we jump ahead to raid composition,wow, let's look at what you'll face during the encounter.

Choosing the group role (for the hot engineer sex)

Why wouldn't you want to have hot engineer sex? That's the point made over at "Groups of Words" in a post about choosing a role specifically to set up your spot in a group wow gold. Well at least that's the point I came away with -- let me start over.

Most players choose their role based on what they want to do the most -- if you like playing as a ranged character, Hunter is probably a good choice, while being a Rogue will let you sneak around. But if playing in groups is your thing, says GoW, then you should aim for one of those roles that groups want: healer or tank world of warcraft gold. That's one reason I personally chose a resto Shaman -- everybody always needs a good healer and/or tank, and with a Shaman, I can fill that role, or go off and do my own thing as well.

GoW compares it to being a woman at an engineering school, where you've got your pick of the 1:6 girl/guy ratio (my alma mater, fortunately, had odds stacked slightly the other way). But other than the hot engineering sex, the point is a good one: if you're on a realm suffering from a lack of tanks and healers and you want to group up cheap wow gold, why not fix things yourself and roll up one or the other?

Sunday Morning Funnies: WoW is not a religion

This week we have a nice long list of comics for you to sink your teeth or tusks into. As always, don't forget to leave your tips to other WoW-themed comics so that they can be featured here! We're also saying a special goodbye to Manic Graffiti. Great work and we'll miss you! Here's hoping this isn't forever!

1. Connedromat from Awkward Zombie kicks off your Sunday morning with a little bit of logic.
2. Ana Hala Balablah from Dark Legacy Comics seems intent on being contrary to logic.
3. Shakes and Fidget have to decide whether their new acquaintance is Friend or Foe?
4. If you liked our recent coverage of Blizzard handling director Uwe Boll, you'll get a laugh out of GU Comics' Especially Not You cheap wow gold.
5. Manic Graffiti sends us a parting statement, mixed with a little hope, in Good-bye is Not Forever.
6. Monkey Punchers explores the Unplayable.
7. NoObz #8 suggests that maybe, just maybe, justice will find that little beggar you can't stand.
8. Ding! explores some of the effects of WoW on the body and mind.
9. Teh Gladiators enter their first arena match with their new, unlikely teammates.
10. From The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf comes WoW is Not a Religion.
11. The Scout Report is a bit confused over Mr. Snuggles wow gold.

Head through the break to vote on your favorite.

What are you looking forward to the most in WotLK?

There have been lots of little bits of news and information coming out about Wrath of the Lich

King lately. With the World Wide Invitational 2008 just around the corner where WotLK will be

playable again for us all, and the news that Wrath is in alpha, we can expect to see more and

more come out about the world of warcraft game.

With this expectation of the beta and eventual release building, a lot of people are getting

excited about different things. So I want to know, what are you most excited about?

For me, I'm most excited about seeing the new end game raid content. I'm with a very dedicated

group of raiders right now who do about 20 hours a week of raiding, and it's a lot of fun.

Hopefully we'll all still be around in WotLK and get to push into the new content quickly and

with a lot of zeal wow gold.

Then there is the Death Knight. Who isn't thrilled at the chance to play a new class? We haven't

ever seen a new class in WoW, and it's bound to throw a wrench in the way a lot of folks play the

game. Seeing the Death Knight get integrated into raiding will be a very interesting thing to

watch cheap wow gold.

Phat Loot Phriday: Shroud of Chieftain Ner'zhul

Finally, some resto Shammy gear! Not only is this sweet helm statted out (yes, I just made that up), but it's named after someone you may have heard of in passing -- that other half of the Lich King.

Name: Shroud of Chieftain Ner'zhul (WoWDB, Wowhead, Thottbot wow gold)
Type: Epic Mail Head
Armor: 902
Abilities:

* In order to save space, I'm going to give you the lore behind this helm while I tell you its stats. So Ner'zhul was an old Chieftain/Shaman of the Orcs, and since this is Warcraft, he was powerhungry and it drove him to make deals with demons. Plus his helm had +48 Stamina and +41 Intellect, which actually made it nice for PvP as well.
* It also had a Yellow and Meta socket, and a socket bonus of 2 mp5. Ner'zhul didn't exactly knowingly make deals with demons, though -- he did what he thought was right, and aligned with Kil'jaeden, who he thought was actually a helpful "ancient ancestor."
* But realizing Kil'jaeden is evil is actually as obvious as the 33 spell haste rating and 13mp5 on this helm, and eventually Ner'zhul did. It was too late, though -- Gul'dan took over, and Ner'zhul only barely saved the Frostwolf Orcs from drinking Mannoroth's blood.
* Kil'jaeden wasn't thrilled with that, obviously, and stuck Ner'zhul in the Frozen Throne as the Lich King, until a young man named Arthas Menethil came along, shattered the Frozen Throne cheap wow gold, and combined his bad self with Ner'zhul's in order to become a crazy powerful being (with lots of Wrath, which we'll see sooner or later).
* And oh yeah, the helm's got 134 healing and 45 spell damage on it. Ner'zhul was originally an Orc Chieftain and resto Shaman, so this helm came from back when he was still supposedly a good guy. But interestingly enough, he still kind of is -- both he and Arthas slaughtered a lot of people thinking they were doing the right thing, and both he and Arthas were corrupted by the deals they made for power. Maybe they belong in that Frozen Throne together.

How to Get It: This is an interesting piece of loot that supposedly comes from the Sunwell. As of this writing, it hasn't been in player hands yet, but it actually comes from another helm, the Cowl of Gul'dan, which reportedly drops from Kil'jaeden. Since Killy Jay hasn't been killed yet, we're not sure about this, but this is what an "ancient ancestor" told us.

Blizzard is trying something new with the Sunwell Loot -- if you don't like the loot you get or want to switch it out for another piece of gear, you can bring the old helm to a Transmuter, along with a Sunmote (that can be obtained from trash inside Sunwell Plateau), and they'll transmute the helm for you. So get the Cowl of Gul'dan (drop rate unknown), add a Sunmote in there, take it to the Transmuter, and voila, you've got (what's probably a replication of) the Shroud of Chieftain Ner'hzul. Cake, right?

Getting Rid of It: Oh, you won't, not for a while anyway. All of the non-raiders will be switching out their casual epics for greens at level 71, but a helm like this you'll hold on to for a while. It does disenchant into a Void Crystal buy wow gold, though -- at least we assume it does. The ancient ancestor was unclear about that one.