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One item that has gotten a lot of buzz on the PTR is Fandral’s Flamescythe.  This item allows Druids to turn into a flaming cat while in Feral form!  This is incredibly cool for Druids and I’ve got the feeling that many raiding guilds are going to be up to their ears with flame cats once 4.2 hits.  Check out the video here.

Unfortunately for Blizzard, this item got me thinking about the amount of attention and care that they give to specific classes in game.  While it’s nice for Druids to get this kind of individualized attention, it makes me wonder why all classes don’t have a dedicated team of artists and engineers devoted to adding slight graphical tweaks to classes?  After all, how difficult is it to create and animate assets for existing characters in the game?

For instance, one of my wish list items for Warlocks has been to add in green flames for all Warlock fire attacks.  Essentially, this boils down to changing the colors that are already in game for existing spells and abilities.  Alternately, what Death Knight wouldn’t want to change the color of their eyes or what Shadow Priest wouldn’t want to alter the color of their Shadow Aura?  It feels like with a minimal amount of effort, Blizzard could implement these slight changes and add some interesting choice to classes (Role Players would probably lose their minds for these alterations).

What all of this wool gathering comes down to is what are players’ expectations for $15 a month and what is Blizzard prepared to deliver?  For me, some slight visual changes would go a long way towards keeping the graphics fresh and interesting and with the sluggish content release schedule, it could help appease players that would otherwise leave.  What small visual changes would you make to your favorite classes?

Something is missing in this expansion and about half a million people have walked away as a result.  The absence of a sufficient amount of end game content is having a nasty effect on Blizzard’s ability to keep its players playing. The biggest gamble that Blizzard made with this expansion was to focus all of their resources on fixing Vanilla WOW.  After having leveled several characters through Old World content, I can’t help but feel that they’ve succeeded. The content feels fresh, the leveling curve is much less steep and the quests are interesting and compelling.

An unintended side effect of this focus on Vanilla WOW has been the absence of enough end game content.  Further, the pace of additional content releases has been significantly slower than previous expansions.  A couple of examples.  The Burning Crusade was released on 1/16/07 and the Black Temple was released with their first major content pack roughly five months later (5/22/07).  With the exception of the Sunwell, Black Temple and Zul Aman, the Burning Crusade was release with the following raid content: Gruul’s Lair, Tempest Keep, Karazan, Magtheridon, Serpentshrine Cavern and Battle of Mount Hyjal!  Wrath was released on 11/13/08 and their first content release, which included Ulduar was released 4/14/09 (about five months later).  With the exception of ICC, Ulduar, Ruby Sanctum, Onxyia’s Lair and Trial of the Crusader, Wrath released with Naxxaramas, Saratherion, Eye of Eternity and Vault of Archavon.

Today was a pretty big day for the geek in me, and I made sure to watch the Microsoft keynote today at E3. From Microsoft came news of some really neat Kinect integration with a brand-new dashboard, games galore using the world record holding hardware and a teaser from our favorite Spartain.

First up, Microsoft keynote awash in Xbox green. There is a new dashboard for the Xbox 360 coming in the Fall Update. It is very clean, and white, featuring panels that look alike like the ones in Windows 8. One of the most sought-after features of the new dashboard that wasn’t even announced at the keynote itself is cloud integration of both your Xbox Live profile and game saves. Also mentioned in the post-keynote press release is a ‘beacon’ that lets your friends know that you want to play certain games. Read more…

Welcome to The Daily Fan, where you get to see what we are reading, listening or tweeting about in our community of fan blogs, podcasts and other sites that cover Console, PC gaming, and much more (Movies this time around).

I have been on a personal mission to find great podcasts about movies. I got recommended Movielicious more times than I can remember but that has been my go to show since it started.  I got recommended a couple good ones via twitter but they didn’t hit the spot.  I realized I should start looking for shows about off beat movies, which fits more into my liking. I ended up running into a treasure trove of podcasts exclusively covering bad movies.  The following podcasts take bad movies that you might have looked over (read: would never watch in 100 years) and give them a try for a fun night of cheesy movie watching. Leave your recommendation for good or bad movie podcasts in the comments below!

	Bad Movie Podcast Bad Movie Podcast covers what you would never watch but after listening to a podcast about that movie, your next stop is Netflix.  Jim and Josh are able to take garbage and put more effort into the podcast than the director, actors, producers did when the movie was being made. My personal starting recommendation are ROTOR, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle (starring Bill Mahr) or the Drive Funky episode
	Yeah It’s That Bad The difference between Bad Movie Podcast and Yeah It’s That Bad! Yeah It’s That Bad more than likely will cover movies you’ve heard of. The premise of the show is simple enough, take low rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes and then see if they really are that bad. Joel and Martin have the comradery that makes a podcast about bad movies listenable. Safe bet is to start on Boondock Saints, Freddy Got Fingered or Batman and Robin.
	How Did This Get Made If there is a mainstream podcast about bad movies, its ‘How Did This Get Made’. The hosts are Pauls Scheer (the League, Best Week Ever), June Diane Raphael (Flight of the Concords) and Jason Mantzoukas (the League). The show might be more palatable with the D-list actors, production and the movies they cover. Most of the time the show covers the latest releases and is worth a listen to. Might not sound like it but I do listen every week.

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How does playing WoW help kill terrorists? The short answer is, nothing—directly. But the US Navy is using a WoW-like approach to helping solve modern-day problems facing today’s military.

When a new raid is dropped into World of Warcraft, it is well-known that Blizzard is watching the top raiding guilds as they make their way through the fights, and will actually make changes on the fly as guilds like Paragon find weaknesses or unbalanced elements in the encounters. Just like the GM’s in Blizzard, the US Navy is starting a pilot program pitting players against real-world problems and watching to see what works and what doesn’t.

Read more…

Looks like the law of averages is alive and well, and Canada is our example today. Now, imagine that you have an unpopular policy. You hope that a very small amount of people affected by your policy will notice, and you think that one half of one percent is a fair target number. I don’t know exactly how many of WoW’s 11 million  subscribers are from the land of Rush, but it is fair to say that it is a large number. Even one half of one percent of a million is 5,000, and it seems like one of those small percentage of players has had enough. Teresa Murphy, from Canada, had enough of her crappy Rogers connection to WoW. She filed a complaint, and Rogers had to admit that it is throttling World of Warcraft.

Not only is Teresa Murphy pissed about it, she wants the ISP fined and her monthly subscription to WoW refunded for the months of sub-par performance that she endured while throttled.

This isn’t a minor issue. ISPs in Canada have moved to tiered content, some as low as 2 GB a month, in an attempt to curb congestion on the network. Traffic management software is to blame here, if you are to believe Rogers. The telecom giant also stated that a fix has been in the works for months, but there isn’t a firm date that WoW players on Rodgers will enjoy normal latency numbers.

As to where this will go, is anyone’s guess. However, we all need to be aware of what’s going on with the Canadian government’s handling of tiered internet. There is no such thing as,”it won’t happen here.”

Source Ars Technica

With all of the craziness that goes on in the world today, it seems that it is harder and harder to find time to just sit down, relax, and play one of your favorite video games. Comparatively speaking, there are worse things that a person can invest their spare time into. For example, think about all of those other addictions like cocaine, gambling, and smoking cigarettes that not only cost tons of money but also hurt the people that are closest to you like your kids or your spouse. Video games can become addictive, therefore interfering with real life responsibilities just like any other addiction. The trick is finding that fine line between leading a productive real life and fulfilling your WoW characters commitment to the game. You may ask, “What commitments could a WoW character have?” Well, as any WoW player knows there are many requirements that a guild must meet before progression raiding can be successful. These requirements include gearing up your core raiders to at least the minimum stats to survive the raid encounters, making sure that there are sufficient mats in the guild bank for potions, food buffs, etc., and making sure that everyone involved communicates smoothly and without conflict. In order to set a guild up for raiding success, it takes not only the raiders in the guild to provide materials, but the casual players as well. A guild is a community that works together towards a common goal, and every single member of a successful guild understands that working as a collective is what achieves that goal. Read more…

Welcome to The Daily Fan, where you get to see what we are reading, listening or tweeting about in our community of fan blogs, podcasts and other sites surrounding World of Warcraft Rift (this time around.), Console, PC gaming, and much more.

Today is Rift’s launch, figure I would throw a couple of fan sites, podcasts and more for you to check out or to get started for your adventure in Telara.  Here are 3 community created sites to kick off Rift! Feel free to leave your favorite Rift podcasts, blogs and more in the comments below!

	Rift Junkies Must have for Rift players, Rift Junkies offers dungeon guides, forums and daily news. Along with a Youtube channel with how to’s they have you covered. If they continue with this type of  content, Rift Junkies could become the Wow Insider for Rift players.
	Rift Watchers Only 4 podcasts into the show and it already sounds polished. Along with this podcast Trion has shown they are keeping their fingers on the pulse of the community by doing interviews on fan podcasts, blogs and more.
	The Sanctum If your a video game podcast fan, you probably already know the group over at Gamebreaker.tv and The Sanctum. Gamebreaker recently got a personal tour of Trion headquarters so start your listening there.

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