2009 has been a year of almost continuous changes for shamans. It seems that not a patch has gone by without some changes to the class, some major, some not so severe. The class has seen mysterious DPS shortfalls, a minor controversy about health in PvP that then carried over into PvE content with the high levels of AoE damage in Ulduar with patch 3.1. Flametongue Weapon saw changes to prevent enhancement shamans from using caster weapons. Resto got a fairly substantial review and some significant tweaks. Elemental also saw some talents redesigned.

While all of this was going on, shamans also saw some controversy about itemization, gear scaling and having to share caster mail between two specs that value different stats, as well as the constant battle with holy paladins to keep their grubby, grasping mitts off of our mail. Yeah, we know you don’t want that MP5 plate, but since you’re the only ones who can possibly get anything out of it, go away and leave our precious alone. (Cue the pages of discussion on why it’s perfectly acceptable for holy paladins to take caster mail and explanations in detail of why I’m an inhuman monster who drowns fish. Yes, fish, That’s how evil I am.)

Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way (remind me to tell you the story of the year my mom beat Santa Claus up in front of the extended family) we move on to shamans in 2009.

Read more »

The druids of Moonglade have always been close …. too close. After a couple glasses of eggnog and under the influence of mistletoe, these two bashful shapeshifters shifted into being something more than just friends. The next day, they pretended that it never happened, but when a few horrendously ugly furry purple babies show up nine months from now, there’s going to be a lot of unanswered questions in the Cenarion Circle. (Thanks to Jack for the screenshot!)

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@wow.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 “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

The dungeon finder tool that rolled out in Patch 3.3 has been a game-changer for most — if not all! — of us. Instead of waiting around to find the dungeon group you need, an ample supply of players eager to run the instance you need is only a few clicks away. With this new-found freedom to run any dungeon any time, a lot of the WoW.com team is out running dungeons all the time: gearing up, collecting gold, leveling alts, collecting tier 9, stocking up on emblems… Well, safe to say that no one’s quite sure how they lived without it. And looking forward to another weekend of chain-running dungeons, I don’t think anyone wants to find out, either.

For more of our exploits — and yours — in game this weekend, read on!

Read more »

It’s time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that loves nothing more than to gaze down upon the whole of Northrend from one of the floating chunks of stone around Dalaran and realize that at some point, a mage has probably killed every living thing down there. At least the targetable ones, anyway. And the ones you can’t target? I’m sure more than one mage has certainly tried.

So I’m officially nominating patch 3.3 for “best patch ever” status. Here’s a short list of the highlights of this patch:

• Three highly challenging, fun, lore-filled 5-man instances, full of sweet loot
• A massive new raid, with four gated sections, 12 bosses, and the promise of eventually being able to shove a Fireball up the Lich King’s tailpipe
• The incredible, game-changing Dungeon Finder Tool, which is responsible for peace in the Middle East, has brought an end to the recession, and has cured cancer
• A few choice mage buffs, including a PvE viable Frost spec
• Quest Tracking without the need for an addon
• Quel’delar and Shadowmourne
• A swiftly approaching new Arena Season
• Weekly raid quests
• The Kalu’ak Fishing Derby
• Perky the Pug
• A host of little changes for low level characters
• Rocket bare

Not shabby, right? And best of all, Blizzard has managed to deploy the majority of this new content without also deploying a host of bugs, glitches, and instability, or otherwise making the game unplayable for awhile as we’ve come to expect from patches this large. There were some log-in issues and bugginess on day one, but by day two, everything was running relatively smoothly by day two. I’m being relatively conservative when I say that Blizzard, in my personal opinion, has hit this one out of the park.

Read more »

Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don’t want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I’m not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I’ll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money.

The new Dungeon Finder that was added in Patch 3.3 has been garnering a lot of attention lately – and for good reason! But did you know that you could use it to make money?

Read more »

There are more server outages hitting this afternoon, unfortunately impacting the same realms that were down for around ten hours last night. The Seattle datacenter was hit with a nasty power outage yesterday, but we currently don’t know the reasons for the current downtime. There are no blue responses yet, but my gut says there’s some lingering damage that will need to be dealt with this afternoon.

Then again, we might be lucky and they’ll be back in ten minutes. Who knows with these things? Keep an eye on WoW.com and we’ll keep you posted should we hear anything. If you’re not sure if you’re part of one of these battlegroups, the full list is behind the cut.

Update #1: Blizzard is aware of the issue. Not much else at the moment.
Update #2: Looks like most servers are coming up. Our poor friends on Quel’Dorei are still down for the count.
Update #3: Maintenance on these realms not necessarily ‘done’ says Malkorix.
Update 11:57pm: Both battlegroups went down 12 minutes ago. More as we know it.
Update 12:18am: Blizzard says they are working on it and that any compensation will come after the problems have been resolved.
Update 3:37am: The servers are up temporarily, but will be intermittently taken down while they continue to resolve the underlying problem.

Read more »

Our friends at Joystiq reported on this fascinating survey by GamesIndustry.com that broke down responses from 13,000 US and EU citizens about how they spend their gaming time. While they don’t have specific numbers for World of Warcraft, the survey says [PDF link] that overall, 15% of gaming time is spent playing MMOs. US players spend about 14% of their gaming time on MMOs, while EU players range from 8% to 16% by country. In the EU, 14% of all players have played an MMO, and in the US, 21% of everyone playing games has played a massively multiplayer online game.

Again, these numbers aren’t specifically for World of Warcraft (and because the survey went down to age 8 and up, they do include the vast virtual worlds aimed at children, like Club Penguin and Disney’s Toontown, which probably throw the numbers off quite a bit), but they do show the effect that WoW has had on the gaming population over the last five years. Five years ago, MMOs were definitely a niche — some hardcore gamers played them, but most people didn’t have the Internet connections to play an online game, much less pay a subscription for one. Nowadays, MMOs represent over one out of every ten minutes of overall playtime, and those numbers are only going to go up.

Ancilorn over at the European forums has confirmed that the armored Frost Wrym mounts mined from early builds of the Patch 3.3 PTR will be rewards for achievements in the Icecrown Citadel raid. Much like past raid dungeons have awarded mounts for completing meta-achievements, such as the Ironbound Proto-Drake for Ulduar, the Frost Wyrms will be “up for grabs,” for dedicated raiders.

MMO-Champion previously unearthed this armored Frost Wyrm model along with spells named Frostbrood Vanquisher and Frostbrood Vanquisher Flight, which could give some insight into some Icecrown Citadel encounters. Despite the confirmation of new reward mounts (expected to grant 310% flying speed, as well), there is currently no word on the removal of the Ulduar reward mounts, which Blizzard has said to stay for “the foreseeable future”.

---

Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

The latest build on the PTR has uncovered the stats of the World of Warcraft’s newest legendary weapon, the two-handed axe Shadowmourne. Apparently bandied around by random GMs on the PTR, players were able to see the highly impressive stats of this weapon, which requires an epic quest to complete. MMO-Champion also has it in its database, the entry of which can be viewed here.

Notable among its features, aside from the ridiculous +223 Strength and 344.1 DPS, are three red sockets and an interesting proc. The sockets can combine for a total of 68 Strength when socketed with Bold Cardinal Rubies and obtaining the +8 Strength bonus. If we understand it correctly, the proc also stacks Strength for a total of 360 before firing off a damaging effect, presumably resetting the Strength bonus to 0. Needless to say, even without the proc, this Item Level 284 weapon is the best two-handed melee weapon in the game and should serve players well into the next expansion.

---

Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

Wowhead has been a go-to site to track what’s going on on the PTR for quite some time, and now there’s even more reason to go there. Their improved new items in patch 3.3 page features the following improvements:

• Categorization by item level, with breakdowns for the five levels of items that are coming at us (219, 232, 251, 264, and 277).
• You can now filter the new items and search within them.
• Items are also sortable.

And this isn’t a new feature, but it bears mentioning, at least if you’re a major news geek like me: you can get an RSS feed of the new items added to the Wowhead database. If you wanted to you could probably hook this up to Twitter, or put it on your blog, or whatever.

Anyway, if you want to know what items are coming at us along with Icecrown Citadel, I think there’s no better place to be. What items are you most excited about?