Want to level a character quick and have it on level 80 in no time? Check out my free WoW Character Levelling guide! It is good for Horde and Alliance alike and guaranteed to work!
Absynth’s FREE Horde levelling guide
May 14th, 2010Portal on Steam – free download!
May 14th, 2010As a promotion, the cool game “Portal” is now available for free on Steam (http://www.steampowered.com/)!
Portal is a mind-blowing game utilizing the Half-Life 2 engine and focusing on puzzling, instead of shooting things. In this game, you have a portal cannon that you can use to open, err, yes, portals. These obey the law of physics (if you throw something onto a portal on the floor, it will fall through) and are used for all kinds of very tricky puzzles.
Portal is a very nice casual game, with a steep learning curve and lots of mind-boggling tricks to it. You should download it now – the promotion only lasts until 24th of May
Cataclysm Alpha leaked – is it real?
May 12th, 2010So, someone leaked an early alpha version of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Everyone’s pretty much in arms about it and weirdly enough, no official statements by Blizzard have been posted yet.
Usually after a such leak, warnings ensue that the downloads will be trojaned, you shouldn’t install untrusted (i.e. pirated) software, that your WoW account might be phished, etc.
In this case, however, it’s quite easy to see if the Alpha is authentic. And from all I can see, it is. The installer is digitally signed by a Thawte Code Signing certificate issued on April 30th, 2010 to… Blizzard.
The installer (which merges new content with a copy of your “normal” WoW installation) downloads files from a CDN that is also used for the official WoW downloads. The included realm list has the “official” testing realms in it. The WoW.exe is probably signed, too (didn’t actually check yet).
So, it’s authentic. But what good is it?
WoW Gold – Reach Gold Cap in 30 Seconds using WoW Gold Manuals
April 27th, 2010See? I can spam, too.
Seriously. A lot of comment spam arrives here, and the vast majority of it are regarding manuals that tell you how to get massive amounts of WoW Gold. Some even claim you can reach Gold Cap (the informal word for the maximum of 214748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper that any one character can hold in their bags) in a mere weeks.
Let me tell you: 99% of these guides are complete and utter crap. From the ones I have seen so far, most are uselessly outdated and consider information that is either completely trivial or just not universally feasible.
An interesting note is that these gold guides are mainly promoted with “affiliate programs” that give the affiliates a higher commission percentage than what the original author earns. This leads to what? Spam, massive amounts of it – polluting the Google index and my (and other) blog.
This pisses me off. That’s why I’m gonna give you guys a couple tips for free, should you not have them figured out by yourself.
Read the rest of this entry »
World of Warcraft: Changing of Rage Mechanics in Cataclysm
April 6th, 2010A recent blue post by Blizzard outlines the changes in the rage system that will occur in Cataclysm. It sounds like yet another complete overhaul and I can only guess if it will be for the better.
Basically, the problems with the current rage system are
a) Rage starvation – you have used up all your rage and have to wait for damage to be done by or to you in order to regain rage. This is especially hard if you’re an off tank who has to maintain a constant high threat level in order to be able to pick off a non-tauntable boss or soak up occasional threat-based damage from a special ability (think Patchwerk in Naxxramas).
b) Next-swing attacks that fail to coherently soak up rage when it is there – if you have Heroic Strike off cooldown and hit it for next swing, you might be out of rage by the time that next swing comes. In my DPS spec, I have this problem with my Fury rotation (Whirlwind, Bloodthirst, Slam if free CD, rinse&repeat) whenever I try to squeeze in an extra Heroic Strike or Cleave.
c) Infinite rage: Warriors, especially tanks, don’t need to manage rage in a boss fight, period. There is not a lot of possibilities to run out of rage if you are tanking a current-level Raid boss. I don’t think this is a problem per se, but I acknowlege the fact that this somehow trivializes gameplay and might be perceived as unfair by DKs (who run out of rune power) and mana classes.
Blizzard will address these problems with a number of mechanic changes.
- Generally, rage generation will be normalized.
- Rage starvation will be fought by new instant rage generation capabilities.
- Haste will improve rage generation. This will hopefully be reflected in loot itemization.
- Crits will generate twice the rage from a normal white attack, currently the factor is lower.
- The whole formula will be revamped to be easier to handle. The current formula, if I am not wrong, is “rage = damage / (30 + 7*weapon speed)” for main hand crits, with varying factors for main and offhand crits and non-crit damage.
Full blue post after the page break.