Category Archives: blizzcon-2009

BlizzCon Roundup: Last year’s fun and games

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BlizzCon 2010! Anaheim! October! Players are buzzing about the new announcement, and already making travel plans -- but what can a person expect to see at BlizzCon? What kind of stuff is there to talk about? Last year's BlizzCon was all about Cataclysm -- a trailer, playable demos of the new races, lore information, and of course the usual cavalcade of costumes and dance routines. Here's a quick roundup of what you missed at last year's BlizzCon, to give you an idea of what to expect this time around:

Pre-show guides and activities:

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BlizzCon Roundup: Last year's fun and games originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Speculating on BlizzCon 2010

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It's a new year and that means another opportunity to play oracle and figure out what Blizzard's plans are for 2010. BlizzPlanet has gone ahead and tossed out some of their ideas on what will happen for BlizzCon this year, laying out their predictions and even speculating on the event date. As you might know, there was a bit of confusion stemming from supposed leaked information that pointed to BlizzCon 2010 happening in Las Vegas in July. That didn't go down so well with Blizzard, and the Las Vegas convention center later retracted its statements.

BlizzPlanet points out, quite logically, that Blizzard probably wasn't too thrilled with that. Even if they had planned to do it in Las Vegas, that kind of public relations misstep is a deal breaker. Besides, Eldorian from BlizzPlanet applies simple, sound logic to his sleuthing work and explains that examining the Anaheim Convention Center's Calendar of Events reveals an odd, blank date on the weekend of August 20-21, yet almost all the weekends of the venue are already booked. With Blizzard being the secretive bunch that they are, he figures those blank dates actually correspond with this year's BlizzCon event. It's a pretty cool theory. Read the rest of their predictions as well as a few of our own guesses after the jump.

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Speculating on BlizzCon 2010 originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Warrior of 2009

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is WoW.com's column about aromatic essential oils for use in baths and to spruce up the house. Unfortunately I don't know anything about those so I'm going to have to talk about playing a warrior in World of Warcraft instead. My hands are tied, I'm afraid.

Wow, that was a year, huh? From the dizzying highs of fury spec in Naxxramas to the somewhat less dizzying highs of Ulduar, arms' constant evolution and protection spec's astonishing makeover as the expansion launched, 2009 was a year that saw warriors sway from top DPS and solid tanks as if in some kind of gale force wind. Armor Penetration went from a stat we'd take if we had to and is now one of our top DPS stats, Block got a makeover that led to changes in how abilities like Shield Block and Shield Slam calculate, and in general we saw the effects of stat inflation on gear really have an effect on us and how we stack up to other classes as tanks and DPS. If you were a tanking warrior in Naxx on January 1st. 2009, for example, you may have had upwards of 35k health. (To be honest, it's hard for me to remember, it may have gotten up to 38k if you stacked stamina.) Now, a geared TotGC tank walking into ICC can pretty easily hit 54 to 55k health fully raid buffed.

And it's only going up from here. Icecrown Citadel promises much improved itemization as well as crazy old school procs that should have warriors, be they DPS or tanks, salivating.

Warriors have definitely had their ups and downs this year, but I think we can say we're ending the year on a fairly high note. Fury DPS has managed to get back to a competitive place with the new weapons, arms still lags behind but has solid PvP and PvE uses, and protection is quite possibly the single strongest tanking class by virtue of sheer flexibility: other tanks may have more health, more armor, or more AoE threat, but protection's suite of abilities includes standouts like Shockwave, Vigilance, Spell Reflection and Warbringer, making it possibly #2 in every single tanking category when no class can claim to be #1 in them all. Let's look at some changes and how they shook out for warriors.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Warrior of 2009 originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Twelve Days of Winter Veil: Day nine – BlizzCon goody bags

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The last of the three contests today is quite a bundle of goodies. BlizzCon 2009 goodies to be exact. We are giving away two BlizzCon 2009 goodie bags, including all original contents. Winners will recieve, among other things, a code for Grunty The Murloc Marine in-game pet, the Noobz Raynor action figure and an official BlizCon 2009 authenticator. You can view the full contents of the goody bag in the gallery below.

The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before 12pm ET (noon) Saturday, December 26, 2009. Please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be one of the winners. You may enter only once and two winners will be selected randomly. Each winner will receive 1 BlizzCon 2009 goody bag with a retail value of US$125. Click here to read the official contest rules.

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!

Gallery: BlizzCon 2009 Goody Bag

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The Twelve Days of Winter Veil: Day nine - BlizzCon goody bags originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 25 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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World of Warcraft: The Magazine still coming later this year

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A few readers have sent us notes asking what happened to their World of Warcraft: The Magazine subscription, and so here's a quick followup to the magazine you might not have heard about since BlizzCon. As far as we know, it's still on track for release in "late 2009" -- the website went live a while back, and they're updating on Twitter. The first issue should almost be done, and it's supposed to have a feature on the WoW TCG, something about Inscription, and memories of the game for the 5th anniversary, as well as lots of other stuff, we're sure.

Additionally, even if you haven't ordered a subscription yet (I haven't, actually, but I meant to), there will be previews of the issue online at some point. Or, on the other hand, if you're tired of waiting, you can contact them with support help and questions via email as well. But as far as we've heard, it's still coming before the end of the year, so keep an eye on your mailbox. It'll be a little different from some of the news you've seen online (it's completely official, which means everything in there is approved by Blizzard before it goes out, not to mention that they'll have some nice access in terms of news about upcoming content), but it definitely seems like it'll be an interesting read.

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World of Warcraft: The Magazine still coming later this year originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Quest: Cash4Emblems

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We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

The Mistress of Pain costume contest winner is actually a Diablo-related costume, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. You'll find an interview with her and more bloggy goodness below.

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The Daily Quest: Cash4Emblems originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Officers’ Quarters: From the mail bag

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

Hello, fellow officers! This week I'm going to try something a little bit different than usual. I tend to focus on one topic that requires a detailed analysis. However, I do receive many more questions that I never feature in the column because they have a more straightforward solution (or, at least, because I believe they have a straightforward solution). So I would write a private reply to the e-mail but never showcase the question here.

I've decided to try an experiment this week and feature several of these e-mails with shorter answers. Even though they may not be the most complex situations, I think the answers will be helpful to other officers. Let me know what you think! Here's the first question.

Too Many Cooks

I was wondering if you could do an article on having too many cooks in the kitchen during raids.

My guild is brand new, 3-4 weeks old, and we run Ulduar 10 and ToC 10 as well as Naxx 25 and Naxx 10 for the new 80s. As of right now, I am my guild's GM as well as raid leader. I have plans in the future to add an official "Raid Leader" to create events and lead some raids although I plan on still leading a few because I really enjoy it.

Right now though, I have a few natural born leaders that attend my raids and it causes some problems.

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Officers' Quarters: From the mail bag originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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