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Beginning this Saturday, September 5th, when we welcome our guest Veneretio from tankingtips.com, and through the end of September, when you join us LIVE for Rawrcast at 4pm, CST you could WIN loot cards from WootLoots.com!

Which loot cards are we giving away?
No telling! You will just have to tune in and WIN! But, we will tell you that one lucky person will be walking away with multiple cards each Saturday! So, are you feeling lucky?

buff this article on buffd.net!

Entries over the age of 18 on the selected date will be qualified – 9/5/09, 9/12/09, 9/19/09, 9/26/09 – 1(one) winner will be randomly selected each at the end of the broadcast. 1(one) winner per household, per 60-day period. Anyone who is a registered Rawrcast winner of any prizes within the last 60 days of the date the winner is announced is automatically disqualified. All prizes are provided by wootloots.com, and any changes or modifications to the September giveaways are made at their discretion.(C)2009 WootLoots. All rights reserved. WootLoots is a independent site and is not endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc or The Upper Deck Company. World of Warcraft interactive game 2004-2008 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Warcraft, World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the properties of their respective owners.

This week Stompalina takes a closer look at Progressive Guild Management and how the announced Guild Achievement and Leveling System will influence change and strengthen their guild community, and how they could influence yours. She also shares tips on how to utilize social networking and guild websites to foster out-of-game communication among members.

Haf and Stomp also touch upon a few of this week’s top news stories found on buff.net, and tackle a hefty listener e-mail regarding how a father can help to make his son understand and care about his roll within the game.

Episode 34 of Rawrcast is available for your listening pleasure via iTunes, RSS feed, direct download, or you can stream it from our main page.

Links to topics discussed this week:

• Heroic Trial of the Crusader to be limited to 50 attempts per week
• Paid Faction changes coming soon
• Restrictions to be placed on race changes to Goblins and Worgen
• There currently is no Cataclysm beta – DON’T FALL FOR THE E-MAILS

Over on the Official World of Warcraft forums, Doombert of the Agamaggon server brought up a topic that has seemed to be getting much more attention as of late from long-time WoW players about the pet that players are getting for the fifth birthday of the game. I can’t help but read a lot of these responses in some sort of crusty old man “back in my day” voice, and how they should be honored in some way for sticking around so long. Usually to these old people I tell them to screw off, but Doombert is actually making a good point here.

buff this story!

For a long time now a debate has been raging over the balancing of PvE and PvP. The debate is, nerfs come to classes unfairly due to PvP and how its ruining the game. I am sure that many of you will agree with that statement. The fact is, yes nerfs happen to PvE and PvP because said skill is used unfairly. For example lets take a look at the incoming Fan of Knives (FoK) nerf. FoK is a rogues only AE skill and I’m sure that if you ask and one in PvE including rogues they will say yes it is a bit over powered compared to other AE from mages and warlocks.

Enter PvP
Your 5v5 team is very excited to play games this week. Everyone is on, pumped, and ready to kill! The queue pops, the strats laid out and you charge in expecting victory only to lose because your casters and healers cant cast due to a rogue spamming FoK. Everyone is slowed, has wound poison, and mind numbing poison on. There is massive damage going out to everyone on your team and this rogue pretty much solos you. You exit the arena wondering how to prevent that from happening again but consistantly lose to teams with rogues. This is what most teams have been trying to figure out for months. Now asking the same question as before: Who is going to complain to Blizzard that this is unfair? Since there is an actual person on the receiving end, they will. This is just one example which can carry over to the many other nerfs that have come about, but a good one. Since there is not an actual person behind the PvE situation you will see less complaints. So when the nerf comes it falls on PvP’s shoulders to take the brunt because they complained the most.

There are defiantly ways to avoid the QQ sessions on both sides and you can see it in many forms already: With fear effecting NPC’s differently than players, Resilience effecting player damage only, and some player made items such as rocket boots and mind control caps not being allowed in arenas at all. Blizzard is making huge steps in separating PvE and PvP and so far it looks good. Until they find a way to separate both aspects of the game, PvE will continue to see Nerfs based off PvP complaints. Just know Blizzard is always working on ways to further separate the two and will keep learning from their mistakes.

-Aellerian

Cataclysm is also going to affect people without the expansion. People just starting the game after Cataclysm launches will only be able to see Azeroth post-Cataclysm. They’ll never be able to experience the world as we know it now. Maybe that’s for the better? I will admit, old Azeroth leveling sucks, as well as some of the old dungeons (FU MARAUDAN). All that lore will be essentially lost on anyone just starting out. Even with the inclusion of heroic Deadmines and SFK, who knows if they will be they same instances we remember. I’m sure Edwin Van Cleef is bound for a come back though. My crush on Van Cleef is incomparable, so Blizz better bring him back if they know what’s good for them!

When you reach level 80, gold flows like crazy. There are what seems like hundreds of quests in Ice Crown that pay you 9-12 gold each, plus there are hundreds of other quests that since you cannot get more experience, pay you gold.

If you are a twink, money also is not a problem. Twinks have the benefit of their main who can make money and just send it in the mail. Even if your main is only level 40, the opportunities for gold are much higher at that level than they are at levels 10 or 20.

The fact is that bronze, silver and gold are hard to come by when you are a low level, non-twink toon. Every coin that goes into your bank is waiting to be spent. Whether spending those coins on more food and drink, profession materials or upgrades at the auction house, the money is spent as fast as you can accumulate it.

This is a frustrating fact, but you have to learn to deal with it and still prosper. Although you can buy one of those guides that will show you how to make money, I am going to be giving you a quick run-down of the approach a lowbie should take to making as much money as possible and save you a couple bucks in the process.

First and foremost: don’t disenchant or sell to a vendor any greens or blues (if you get any), other than the soulbound items. These items must be saved for the auction house to maximize your income. The greys and whites can be sold to a vendor, but if there is a market for it in the AH, you may want to go in that direction.

When you do use the AH to sell your goods it is best to keep to the 10-20% rule. This rule is one that I abide by all of the time when I am working the AH on my low level toons. It goes like this: sell your items at a discount of 10-20% lower than the lowest per unit price currently in the AH.

Now, there will be people who argue that this approach leaves money on the table since you could sell that item at a higher price. But, the fact is that you need money and if you price the items correctly there is a much greater chance they will sell. Plus, by undercutting the market you can leave the items in the AH for only 24 hours rather than 48 which saves you the upfront costs.

When you are at a higher level and gold is not such an issue, you can play the AH market where you buy up the really cheap items that can be sold for more or by overpricing your items by a bit and waiting for them to sell. Right now, you most likely cannot afford to play those games and you need the money.

My level 29 warlock usually has an average of 1 1/2 gold to 2 gold on him. I have had as much as 13 gold, but every level I gain I am in the AH trying to find bigger and better gear. I hate dying, so it is always my goal to keep my toon as geared out as my gold will allow.

The second important factor is to pick a profession that you can easily make money off of. When you are of a low level, I personally recommend either mining or skinning. These two professions include items that are abundant in the world and you can stack up amounts in your bags to drop into the AH. Other gathering professions such as herbalism are good also, but there seems to be less of an abundance of the low level herbs than there are of the mining nodes and skinnable creatures.

The professions that can make you money when you are at a higher level such as enchanting, jewelcrafting and leatherworking, etc. all cost money for you to level. You end up working in the opposite direction many times if you follow these professions. You can make money performing them, but these clearly are not the easiest way to make money when you are of such a low level. Plus, you can always drop mining or skinning later on if you don’t like it; once money is not such an issue.

Lastly, I recommend you get the biggest bags possible based on your money situation. The reason I say to invest in big bags is you want to collect everything that can be sold, even if it is just to a vendor. Many times you can get enough to keep your gear repaired and to buy some gear out of the AH if you collect and sell everything. I try not to pass up anything that is of value and can be sold.

The one thing you cannot do is BUY GOLD. It breaks the user agreement and if you are caught could result in your being banned from the game. But, even if that is not a concern, it is against the spirit of the game. The game is about getting money through quests, goods, professions, etc., and not by paying some Chinese or South Korean gold farmer real money. If no one bought it, there would be no gold farming in the game, because there would be no market for it.

Now get out there and earn some gold.

-Inquisitor

After I posted the original diatribe against patch 3.2, I was informed by some people who wished to sound very important that if I just “waited until Blizzcon” all of my flaming would be for naught and that I would be racing to repair my sullied reputation with Blizzard. “Your retractions better be as passionate as your flames,” they said, and followed up with a casual hint at their “insider information,” and that they “wished they could tell me what they knew,” but obviously, they couldn’t. Well, I am sitting here after the fabled convention at a loss. Surely after all that build-up about what was to come I was expecting some drop of information about this patch and why I was surely going to be left with some great retraction in my previous post. I watched Blizzcon with the anticipation of hearing something earth-shattering. I really hoped that what I was being fed via twitter wasn’t hot air but was instead sound, factual evidence that would make me want to write about how stupid I felt about “hatin” on this patch so hard. What happened was more of the same: it wasn’t mentioned at all, except for a mention of a zombie Onyxia. It is filler content, but what pisses me off the most is that I don’t have a choice in the matter. If I want to go into Icecrown the day it comes out, I will have to look like every other one-ball, half-ass out there with some pseudo-leet purples and a chip on my shoulder. And yes, I do care about aesthetics, that’s why I play a three-dimensional game as opposed to a God damned text adventure.

Saturday morning consisted of preparing Haf’s famous Beer Brauts and eagerly awaiting the arrival of Beau and Leala Turkey. Upon their arrival, we dove into the bratwursts and snuggled in for the start of the Dungeons and Raids panel at 3pm, CST. As mentioned in the previous post, the DirectTV limited our direct exposure to certain panels. So, as for Saturday, we masses of streamers weren’t privy to the initial information from the WoW Open Q&A and the Game Systems Panel, but we kept up with the breaking information via various news sources and the masses tweeting direct from the event floor.

Dungeons and Raids Panel
This was the meat of the convention for me: content! The panel started off simple enough, showing the thought and development process of how dungeon/raid instances are created. Watching the idea take shape was a nice insight into the time and technology that is taking place behind the scenes of this wonderful game that we sometimes take for granted. I sat in awe of the huge chunk-lets of information that were divulged as the panelist reviewed the process. During this discussion, it was formulated that advances are made to accommodate the expansiveness of some dungeons, like the teleportation devices in Ulduar. Haf and I both giggled, “Wasn’t that new in Karazahn?”

After the process was disseminated, the dungeons being prepared for release at ship were expanded upon after initially being discussed during Friday’s preview panel. There will be a staggering 6 leveling dungeons and 4 raid dungeons upon initial shipment of Cataclysm.

Uldum
Within the new zone of Uldum there will be two dungeons, Grim Batol and and the Halls of Origination. Some interesting nuggets of information were shared regarding some mysterious AWMD (Azerothian Weapon of Mass Destruction) that is hidden within these dungeons in the desert. Let me guess, when we go looking for this weapon, without the support of our fellow Horde/Alliance counterparts, we cause great tides to turn and overturn the leader without the full support of the underlings working within the confines of this area. I think that GW wrote this story a few year back. Sounds familiar. I will be interested to see if we end up finding Bran Bronzebeard held up in a hole somewhere, covered in fleas. Just a thought.

Upon initial viewing, the Halls of Origination look and feel very similar to AQ40 with a dash of Ulduar. But, that isn’t that much of a stretch considering the story behind the zone. I think… You know, me and lore don’t always get along. Good news is, there will be stuff to kill in there!

Sunken City of Vash’jir
Also available at release is the Abyssal Maw, one of two 5-player dungeons within the Sunken City of Vash’jir. And, let me just say, it is beautiful. They have created an underwater oasis that feels so organic and harmonic that even the glass walls bow as to create the effect that the bubble of the ocean pressure could give way at any moment.

Blackrock Caverns / Blackwing Decent
Since the old world content is going to be new all over again, it was no surprise that new dungeons are being added to zones we had all known and loved back in Vanilla. In this mix is Blackrock Caverns, a new 5-man instance, which appears to be a subterranean area under the well-known Blackrock Spire. Expect a very similar feel to the lava-filled, iron-clad days of BWL and UBRS.

And, by doing a dive-bomb on Naferian’s terrace atop Blackwing Lair, you will come across the new 10 and 25-man raid instance, Blackwing Decent. Artwork wasn’t shared for this little gem, but I can imagine it is where we see Naverian’s decent into madness.

The Firelands
This new raid dungeon got my blood pumping more than all of the others announced on Saturday. We will once again face the Lord of Fire upon his homeland, the fire plane within destruction of Mount Hyjal. Being able to face Ragnaros is even more nostalgic for me, personally, than Onyxia was. This time around we are pitted against Rag upon his firy spire-like throne. And, this time around he isn’t weakened from his decent into the Molten Core.

Needless to say, I was as giddy as a pre-BC raiding ZG graduate once again when I heard this news. I can’t wait to hear what epic prelude cut scene or pre-combat storyline that Blizzard has in store for this journey into endgame.

3.3 Icecrown Citadel and Dungeon Wings
Before all of the Cataclysm hubbub is released, we are still slated to face and defeat (not that I think he is actually going to die), none other than the Prince of Loredarian, Arthas and the sick-ass voices in his head. Much as the outside of the Citadel leads us to believe, Icecrown is an expansive thrown, which upon entry gives feeling to the icy hole atop the spire where Arthas’ heart should be.

The massive Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon will consist of 12 bosses, and is situated upon 3 floors, the last of which will be reached through an airship event as you spiral upwards towards the pivotal thrown room. I must say, the excitement was evident through the room as they described this unique Alliance vs. Horde event which has you racing the opposing faction, jumping ship in a pirate-isq fashion, shooting turrets, and generally causing much mayhem as you strive to reach your final destination. It looks to be an epic ride.

In addition to Icecrown Citadel, developers are throwing in three new 5-man instances under the bowels of the mines and refinery along the outskirts of the hold. And, as an added bonus, players who participate in these more “casual” encounters will interact with Arthas, much as we have throughout our experiences in Northrend. It was mentioned, and I agree wholeheartedly, that Wrath has been a success because we faced and interacted with Arthas more than players had come to know Illidan in Burning Crusade. By making the player interested in Arthas, the story feels more relevant and important to players of all levels of play.

3.2.2 Onyxia
Lastly, the Dungeons and Raids panel covered the previously released information regarding the reworking of Onyxia’s Lair, and covered a few specific itemization updates, including the Burnished Quel’Serrar. Previously the vanilla veterans had moaned when Blizzard posted that the original Quel’Serrar was being removed when the reworked Lair is released. But, alas… The epic, simple, and stately sword is being reworked as well in a less quest-y version.

I’m equally excited about the 5-year anniversary pet. It is NOT the same-old dark whelping that was originally thought. It is, indeed, a unique broodling, complete with deep breaths, hiccups and smoke rings. My warm-fuzzy girly side is brimming with anticipation, no matter who wants to pewp on my parade.

More to come later…

Now that Blizzcon has come and gone, and we have all learned just how true the leaks were, I think it is important to put the entire situation into some perspective.

Blizzard, despite what you or I may think of them, is a company whose mastery of PR is almost as good as their games. We eat up whatever they give us, and often sharpen our weapons to come to their defense, as much of the Rawrcast chat room did when TotalBiscuit was on Saturday.

I have little faith that the “leaks” were leaks at all. I’d call them seepage, but that gives me bad thoughts of the warning labels on products with olestra. I know that wow.com broke, and sometimes smugly, defended their break, but there is a HUGE difference between breaking news and reporting on what Blizzard expects you to report on. I have always thought the leaks were actually plants, and even suggested they could be red herrings.

Why would anyone expect anything more than a Blizzard plant?

Michael Sacco is a former Blizzard employee who now writes for wow.com. If there was any breaking news made by the site that was not under the guidance of Blizzard, he would be the first person targeted in a Blizzard investigation. Blizzard management would know exactly what he knew and, if they were serious about their NDA, they would pursue him with the full extent of the law, and since he still probably carries some information and sources with him, particularly since Cataclysm was being worked on before WotLK shipped, the burden would lie with him and wow.com to prove the information didn’t come from him. It seems much more likely that Blizzard’s marketing department either worked with them or played them to post the news Blizzard wanted out prior to Blizzcon.

Some of you might be asking why in the world Blizzard would want to plant such information when Blizzcon has typically been the marquee stage for similar announcements. Well, there is always the subject of cash. If Blizzard is able to build enough hype leading up to Blizzcon, they are able to entice many players to purchase both the DirectTV and internet streams of the event. Unlike the venue where Blizzcon takes place with a certain amount of overhead involved in occupying the convention halls, the streams are almost entirely profit. If a player is convinced, through the use of outside sources, the next expansion will be announced, many would be willing to drop the forty bucks for the confirmation and any new information then released at Blizzcon. Do you think it’s coincidence the Cataclysm announcement was the very first thing to happen at Blizzcon? Of course not, Blizzard expected anyone and everyone who is that involved in the community to already know the name of the next expansion.

What about data mining sites?

Here is where Blizzard again played the community. They understand the unquestionable talent at sites like MMO Champion and were able to plant exactly what information they wanted mined out of the game files. If Blizzard was that concerned with data mining, don’t you think they would purposely refrain from planting such information for people like Boubouille to find? Blizzard knows what he does, and they know he’s amazingly good at it. They also know the only way to prevent him from piecing together information is to not put it in a place he looks. If you don’t want your kids to find their Christmas presents, are you likely to hide them in places they frequent? Ya, didn’t think so. MMO Champion was able to confirm the “leaks” because the information was planted all along. Much like the new archeology profession, we will only find what the developers want us to find. If there are not artifacts, there is no archeology.

Oddly, much of the information released that is still in early development, like talent trees, archeology, and the path of the titans, was not in any leaks or data mining reports. The stat revisions were also missing. Boubouille may have found clues, but, it appears, only tried to report on things he was able to confirm, like any good journalist would. Why though? Well the easy answer is because they were never intended for any of that information to be found. They wanted all of that to be revealed in their panel discussions and releasing such information would make most of the Warcraft news pretty boring.

If anyone one doesn’t believe Blizzard listens to the community and uses GIANT rabbit ears any wolpertinger would be jealous to check our pulse, they need to evaluate how they played the community like a giant violin to build Blizzcon excitement.

-Rhab

photo courtesy of New Line Cinema – Austin Powers: Goldmember