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While Yiska's away...Lacanoz Day! Healer top tips, how to improve your play. RMD potentially a comp to be reckoned with?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Lacanoz) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:42:36 -0500

So, the Blogfather is away this weekend. Therefore, my ego demanded I took the top spot, as the official President of the European Paladin community. Hopefully, you'll enjoy today's blog, and as ever, any comments, criticism or complements will be accepted with the greatest (Paladin in Europe)/humility.

Top Tips to Improving your Healer play:

Now, you’re stuck. You’ve pushed hard, but you just cannot break 2k. What you really need to know is: How can I improve my play? It’s all very well blaming your partners and anyone but yourself, but there is always something you can be doing better. There’s a lot I myself need to work on, I’m perfectly aware of this. Recognising what you can do better though is always the first step to improving.

If you’ve ever wondered why so many low-rated players seem insecure and angry, to a much greater extent than good players, it’s because insecurity goes hand-in-hand with an inability to self-criticise. Instead of thinking “well, I could have positioned better to avoid that swap”, they’re thinking “OMG WARRIORS R SO OP”. That may be true, it may not, but regardless, there is always something you can do to make the situation more favourable.

General Tips:

1) The most important part of playing a healer comes from practice – anticipating and dealing with damage. You need to be able to anticipate switches and prepare for them. That’s more of an insight than a tip, but it’s definitely the most important part of playing a healer, as your job is, primarily, to heal. Know when to use your fast heals, and when to use your big heals. Against a team such as elemental/destro/priest, pre-casting and cancelling your big heals can be effective (if you’re not liable to get interrupted by spell lock or wind shear). However, against Shadowcleave for example, it can be much more effective to simply spam your faster heals.

2) Positioning Positioning Positioning. Never EVER be wasting movement, if you’re stood still doing nothing then you’re wasting a resource – movement time. If you’re playing a priest or druid against a warrior cleave team, you cannot afford to be stood out in the open, so get your instant casts up and move. Pillar positioning is an art form, you need to position just so – so your partners can efficiently peel off you and you can easily get away around said pillar. A classic example of good pillar positioning is in warrior/paladin mirrors. These are won by getting on the other paladin and dropping him. If you’re on the back foot, you should be by the pillar, so as soon as their warrior charges you, yours can charge him and you can completely waste their switching chance.

3) Communication. Your teammates should always know what is happening. You should be calling whenever you’re controlled, and calling whenever you’re having problems keeping your teammates up. At least in 2v2, you can call when you want your partner to use his defensive CDs (for example, playing war/pal vs hunter/druid I’m going to spend a long time in control once they start it, so I’ll pretty much immediately call for a shield block when I’m put into freezing trap). Also, practice coordinating CC – more on this later.

4) Know when you can play aggressive, and which comps you have to play very defensively against. Understanding how other comps play against yours is vital to understanding how you’re going to beat them. If you know they’re unlikely to switch onto you, and that you’re going to be the aggressor for a long period of time, you can chase their healer looking for the fear/HoJ/Cyclone/Shear. However, if you’re playing against a comp with much more potent WTF factor then you may need to be concentrating more on prehotting/preparing for the burst. A good example of this is playing the priest in an RMP against Beastcleave. There WILL be moments when you can afford to play aggressively, but on the whole you should be positioning carefully, and instead of attempting to align the fears, wait for the fear opportunity to come.

On a more class-specific level:

Priest:

1) Experiment with using your defensive cooldowns. Personally, I’d advise staggering them rather than using them all at once. Don’t be afraid to use power infusion defensively if you feel that the extra healing will be needed. Pain Suppression earlier rather than too late, even if you get minimal use from it, that’s better than no use at all.

2) Don’t just fear because you can. Unless you’re playing a very CC-heavy comp, blowing fear just because you’re next to the other healer is a waste. Instead, use it to multiply your pressure rather than to start it. If you have the enemy at 100% and you fear their healer, he might only drop to 50%, particularly if he’s fast using defensive abilities. However, if he’s already at 50% and expecting a heal to be incoming, that fear interrupting the heal makes their situation much more desperate, and means he’s likely to be that much slower using, for example, shield wall or divine shield.

3) Know when aggressively dispelling is worthwhile, and when not. When playing my druid, I’ve seen some priests purging very badly, so instead of increasing pressure by removing my HoTs, they’ve actually helped me survive. This isn’t always a good rule, but I generally try to stick to purging only when the druid or the target is below 60%. That way, he’s trying to recover from damage, and has to heal more than the initial damage.

4) Pre-Mass Dispelling may be fancy, but don’t go overboard with it. A lot of priests pre-dispell way too early, don’t be one of them. If they block at high health, then MDing it is pretty worthless, instead wait for the block/bubble at low health and that’s when you should have pre-dispelled instead of burning mana pointlessly.

5) Use Shadowfiend when you have pressure. If you end up burning it late merely as a mana tool, then you’re not only making it more likely to get controlled, you’re also wasting the rather high amounts of damage it puts out.

Druid:

1) The single most important thing that most druids do is nourish too much (myself included). Know when to Nourish, and when Cycloning will work better. Obviously, you need to keep track of when they’ve used their trinket, as otherwise you may end up cycloning only for the dps to trinket and kill the target. Simply put though, cycloning prevents their damage for 6 seconds, in which time you can get another two or three nourishes off with only one (instead of 2 in a 3v3 situation) DPS beating on the target.

2) Don’t waste Barkskin, but use it early, not only when stunned. When switched to by a caster cleave team, a lot of Druids wait till they’re deepfrozen or shadowfury’d to use barkskin, but by then you can easily have lost 8k health. Get it out early, particularly if you’re positioned badly.

3) Use travel form. This may see a no brainer, but I do my best to watch streams, and a lot of people streaming seem very reluctant to actually use travel form. Get a few HoTs up, then get into travel form and kite the damage off. You’re not a tank, you’re a druid. You particularly shouldn’t be casting (cast-time spells) much with DPS on you, as unlike other healers, you don’t have a talent reducing interrupt/silence length, so you’re punished more if you screw up your fake-casting.

4) NS early rather than late. Depends on your comp, but myself I like to use NS early to deal with a switch rather than waiting for my target to be beyond help. Similarly, don’t be afraid to NS that cyclone if you’re pretty sure it’ll cause a lot of pressure. I won a lot of games yesterday on the NS-Cyclone.

5) Use roots in 3v3. I’m serious, it is useful. So many druids slack on the control in 3s, thinking they’re only there as a healer. If they only wanted a healer, they’d be using a paladin. Get that dps roots’d, particularly if your team has a lot of trash buffs/UA.

Paladin:

1) The number one thing I’m tiring quickly of paladins doing is using sacrifice merely as a crowd-control breaker. You don’t have pain suppression, but sacrifice is the next best thing. Chuck your sac effect up, watch your own health but enjoy the reduced burst on their nuke target. I mentioned it last blog, but I really want to hammer this idea home.

2) Once again, use your cooldowns early. I don’t mean bubble (those of us who played paladin in TBC realise that bubbling far too early is almost as bad as bubbling too late. It’s not a mitigation effect like shield wall, it’s an immunity, you can wait before using it). However, use Aura Mastery early if you’re the only player on the team to benefit from the use of it. If you’re playing with a caster, still be greedy with Aura Mastery. You’re more important than them.

3) Protect your pleas. Don’t use it on CD, but use it when you have pressure. That means you’re less likely to get Zilea’d and have it dispelled before you can LoS. Also tell your partners you’re intending to plea, they may be able to control any dispeller on the other team.

4) Position aggressively if your comp will let you. If you’re playing a high-pressure comp such as beastcleave or TSG, then get in the middle of the action, get that JoJ/HoJ down and do your bit. I played against a good beastcleave yesterday, but the paladin was way too defensive and suffered for it. A good idea can be to divine sac early for damage reduction so your team drops slower, and take the opportunity to play aggressive.

Shaman:

1) Positioning is more important, in my opinion, on a shaman than on any of the other healing classes. You’re not much more durable than a priest or druid (if at all), but you rely on using your wind shear/purge, they really are your main tools. Find a balance between a good aggressive position and a position you can effectively escape a switch onto you with. Take advantage of ghost wolf in this respect.

2) See point 3 under Priest on Aggressive dispelling.

3) Pre-HoT using riptide. So many shaman don’t, but it is worthwhile. The HoT may not be fantastic, but if you have it, why not use it?

RMD – A comp with some potential?

Last night, I found some randomers to play some RMD with. I haven’t really played Druid much this season beyond an early rush as war/ret/druid. I ended up, after some testing, with a mage who hasn’t really played in WotLK but was, I’m told, excellent in TBC, and a decent enough rogue who although is not perfect, has that very important talent of being able to listen to what he’s told.

The comp plays very differently from RMP most of the time. You’re not going to play in such a rushdown manner, instead you’re going to concentrate on coordinating CC between the druid and the mage. You have a huge advantage in that although you have three relatively squishy targets, you have the capacity to keep two players controlled for a good 80% of a game. One thing I would note though is that you can play rushdown effectively, don’t shy away from it like I instinctively did.

Specs:

Rogue: I’d advise Envenom here as you’ll find yourself sitting on warriors a fair amount of the time. However, it’s very possible to succeed with plain muti/prep. Heightened Senses is a must, because you really do want to sit on enemy rogues.

Mage: Pure and simple, frost. I haven’t tested arcane yet, but the reduction in novas could probably damage the playability of the comp.

Druid: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0EG0zbZZf0IubuxrdA0sio

Different from your standard Druid build in that I really would advise having 5/5 Starlight Wrath. You will often find yourself wanting to play aggressively, so those fast-casting wraths are the be-all and end-all.

Tactics:

Vs RMP:

I’d give a good RMD a 50/50 chance here. You don’t have the same capacity to burst their rogue down as they do, but you have so much more control. Begin sheeping priest and cycloning mage, switch CC, and pressure their rogue hard. Use blind early if they use a trinket. Keep your rogue fully HoT’d (it plays different to an RMP mirror in that they cannot really go on your healer, as you have much more lastability than a priest in this situation and it’s much easier to escape their damage with travel form.

Vs WLD:

Very, very easy. Sit on the lock hard and CC warrior. Switch warrior, CC lock. Roots warrior reswitch. Either score a kill by RNG or by outlasting their druid’s mana. Not at all difficult if you prepare for their bstorm. One RNG factor from the pet dispel on polymorph, but with winter’s chill and faerie fire up, any lucky RNG should be recoverable from.

Vs Beastcleave:

Strangely, you have a much easier time of it than RMP, probably because of Druid healing being better in this situation. We generally sit on the shaman CC hunter/healer, but you can switch. You also have great turtling possibilities, don’t be afraid to turtle and go for a pet kill. You should have a good 50-60% chance against an equally geared/skilled beastcleave.

Vs Elemental Shaman:

I’m not kidding, Elemental Shaman teams seem to be the biggest counter to RMD. Of all our losses, about 80% of them were against elemental shaman teams, mainly Ele/War/Pal and Ele/Hunter/Druid. If they have a vulnerable healer, try to drop him (as we did the Druid against the second named team). If not, go on the other member, as we had real problems stopping the shaman’s damage even fully tunnelling him.

Vs Castercleave:

If Warlock/Mage then go Warlock and control the others. If Warlock/Shaman go warlock again :P If Mage/Shaman then regrettably you’re on the shaman. Quite beatable to be honest, you have enough control to make their lives a pain. I’d even go as far as to claim that RMD was a soft-counter to most castercleave teams (although warlock/mage is the hardest due to their two long-duration interrupts).

Vs TSG:

Quite a difficult game to play (No game as RMD is easy though). You need to get sufficient control out early and sit on one of the melee, and switch with switched CC. If they manage to get both DPS onto any of you for >5 seconds you’re likely to lose. Even if it’s on the mage, blocking means no control while in block, which means you’re going to lose. RMD is, by and large, a control based comp.

Warcraft Movies Choice of the Week

Well, seeing as our friends at ESL were busy covering their tournament on WoWverload this week, I felt I had to push this movie: ShadowPriest/Rogue.
While I know nothing of the players involved, and there were some play mistakes (in my opinion), I found it a very enjoyable watch, and as such I thought it deserved a mention.
It's not a must-see, but if you're bored, and you need something to watch, then I'd heartily recommend this. All footage is taken from 2v2 arena on Stormscale EU (supposedly the most competitive server from the most competitive BG (other than RUIN) in Europe.)

I'd also like to take the opportunity to reveal that I myself will be releasing a series of short WoW movies later on in the year, rather guides to playing the three healing classes I play at a high level, priest/paladin/druid. If anyone is interested in helping with the editing etc, then that'd be fantastic.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for reading, drop me a comment to criticise/applaud/simply say hi. Lacanoz away.

EDIT: Also, if any of you European players that have free transfer to Xavius want to come and play with me, send me a message here and we'll discuss it.

Wetting my feet with raiding

no.spam@gameriot.com (gamebynight) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:44:39 -0500

This past week has been an eventful one for me. I've been working to get back into WoW and I think I've found my groove again. I have my rotations down and my keybinds rememorized and, not least of all, I have my UI in working order and fully functional again. One of the best parts about getting back into the game is being able to experience things I haven't been able to before and I really have my new guild to thank for that. They've been great with working me into things and have generally made my experience back a lot more fun that it'd been in my previous attempts.

I actually have these guys to thank for one of the funnest times I've had in WoW in probably over a year. Earlier this week, I was able to run my first raid since I PuG'd the first two bosses in Naxxramas (we wiped several times on the first one, surprisingly enough... or... not). Luckily, this crew knows their stuff and has the skill and gear to pretty much float through most encounters. So, when they came up short on an Ulduar 10-man run the other night, I was excited to accept their invite to fill-in for a missing DPS.

Ulduar is, well, let me just say, wow. The word epic comes to mind. Most raiders will probably laugh at my naivete but coming from

exclusively 5-man dungeon running, the scale of the zone is just massive. The encounters were complex enough that I had to pay attention and be looking out for certain things (like buffs/debuffs - note to self, move SCT to the right so it's not blocking my avatar).

I have a soft spot for dragons, so the Razorscale fight was one of my favorites. I have to say though, the coolest encounter, if not the most complex, was Kologarn. I know a lot of you don't play WoW, so imagine this: you're facing off against a giant so big you can only see the top half of him over the edge of a cliff. Throughout the fight, he'll grab a raid member in one of his massive hands, shake them, and throw them at the wall when he's done. Finally, when you've killed the arms and destroy the torso, you see that he's actually half a giant growing out of solid rock and to move on you have to walk across to pink splotch that used to be his midsection. It reminded me of the fight between Ender and the Giant in the fantasy game from the book Ender's Game.

After that run, I was able to get myself a nice new staff which a guildie enchanted right away without asking for anything in return, as well as a nice off-hand should I go for a sword and frill set-up at some point.

Today should be even more interesting as Maxivik arranged a Naxxramas run to help gear me up. I'm the only guy who needs anything from there, so this kind of help is really appreciated. I'm interested in the gear upgrades but, on another level, I'm more interested in finally seeing all of it. Naxx is one of those raids where it's just cool enough to make you want to raid it just to see it. The theme is dark and Undercity-ish, which is right up my lane, so I'm excited. Plus, I shouldn't be a total noob since I've read up a bit on WoWWiki and already done a couple of the fights.

And, on that note, I should get out of here. I've spent the majority of this morning editing the audio for the podcast, so it's time I get moving so I can be ready to go when it starts in an hour and a half.

Oh, before I go, I have an exciting bit of news for you all. Tonight, I'll be going to see.... New Moon. Oh yes, Team Jacob vs. Team Edward. Will I report back with a full, line by line, synopsis? Methinks YES. Mwahaha.

... The things we do for love.

Visit Game by Night

Steam Forums Presents: Drawn 2 Life

no.spam@gameriot.com (Sol Invictus) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:44:26 -0500

A thoughtful poster by the name of redban has come up with a nifty little community effort on the Steam Powered forums called “Drawn 2 Life”, in which forum readers can each submit a character or an object from the Left 4 Dead series of games.

In the project’s rules, users don’t have to be Picasso, so most of the submissions are pretty damn bad. But still, some of them look pretty damn nice. For example, take the poster above, which features an imagined Left 4 Dead campaign that features a Francis looking very much like a bikerized Edward Norton.

At the very least, it looks better than Valve’s own poster for Last Stand, which has a poorly drawn Zoey looking very much like the Octomom.

Be sure to check out the rest of their work.

Interview with Nick 'Tasteless' Plott

no.spam@gameriot.com (PolygonreVue) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:35:20 -0500

Today, TSL season 2 begun. Today, by a happy accident, I have the great pleasure of presenting this flaming hot interview with the BallerToss himself. I am of course talking about Nick 'Tasteless' Plott, the original professional Starcraft caster who has brought us all countless of hours packed with action.

From Artosis' apartment in Seoul, South Korea, Tasteless took the time to talk about Starcraft as a professional sport and how he thinks and hopes that what we're seeing now is only the beginning. On top of that, and to the pleasure of the entire Starcraft community, he reveals the truth behind the GomTV drama. This is a world-wide exclusive, nerds & nerdettes, all the various messages on Twitter and other rumors we have heard amount to nothing - this is the official story, told for the first time ever in this interview.

I hope you will enjoy it, leave your suggestions and feedback - if there is enough demand, Tasteless will speak again...

ESL Qualification Rounds End, ArenaCast - Twilight Edition...Wait, Dreamhack & WoW, Ghingis Guide pt. 2

no.spam@gameriot.com (Yiska) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:50:20 -0500

I've been nerding it up lately with L4D2 and a couple of striking realizations occurred to me:

1. Playing an FPS game from time to time doesn't betray your love for WoW
2. Germany sucks in terms of media law
3. Slapnuts is a gigantic *****

While the first two points explain themselves, our beloved conehead outed himself as a slave of reality. Yes, you get that right gameriot. Slapnuts didn't want to play computer games till 8am even though he had the best "HUNTER, HUNTER, HUNTER!!!"-screamer of all time on his team (needless to say I didn't realise my headset was broken). Someone really got his nuts slapped. Anyway...WoW blog.

ESL Qualification Rounds end - Confusing among the American teams

The ESL Qualification round ended and Europe got a really healthy mix of all kinds of different comps going, even including Felic - a fellow PROT BEATZ player. Overall there are only two RMPs in the top 8 of the ladder qualification and that is of course also because most of the quality RMPs were already invited before. I hope all invited teams get back in shape for the European top 16 round and we can see some natural selection take place to only send the strongest European teams to the Global Finals. It so happens that the ESL released the European top 16 groups. Here they are:

A
Godmode (Hydra, Flyn, Kalimist) RMP
The End Come So Far (Nathalol, Gnomew, Mastah) RMP
SK Sansibar (Fraki, Noonia, Moldran) DK/War/Druid, TSG
RNG Party (Draintrain, Blade, Iopakodoo) WLD

B
x6tence (Siler, Souler, Falcon) PHD, TSG
aAa (Thorkin, Khuna, Pheonix) RMP
rocknroll pigtails (Bloodx, Evleh, Exerion) Feral Rogue Priest
BRB ICE CREAM TRUCK (Sanchez, Instance, Yunisha) Shadowcleave

C
iNNERFiRE (Desis, Coold, Stg) RMP
No Surprises (Defiancex, Joker, Keyn) RMP
pwning noobs all day (Maitoh, Nushz, Valkyriee) Ret/Rogue/Priest
Pincho Gaming (Anika, Dev, Jetz) H/Lock/Pal

D
SK Gaming EU (Another, Inflame, Enigmz) Shadowcleave
plan-B (Texi, Kajn, Daisyduke) RMP
Emo Whoopass Patrol (Felic, m0jjen, Sonija) PROT BEATZ/War/Druid
Death Row (Botti, Tokash, Yurito) Sham/War/Pal

3rd and 2nd of each group have to battle it out against the 2nd and 3rd of another group. Group A&D 1st place should be Godmode & SK.EU but other than that, the competition seems really healthy. You can see the whole news here.

On the dark side of the WoW community (heh), things don't look as bright at all. Players report that the US TR had only about 15 teams playing and the whole qualification round was a mess with vendors not being available for two weeks, queues taking ages not only because nobody is on there, but also because there was a bug that limited the realm to only host one 3vs3 rated arena at a time. The continental finals in Edmonton are mere three weeks away and teams still aren't able to safely buy plane tickets and get their hotel room reservations as they don't even know if they will qualify for the tournament.

On top of that, 3.3 is around the corner and the teams which qualify for North America might not be the deal at the global finals next year. You want to hear more about that topic? Read on.

ArenaCast - Twilight edition

Yet again JP&Keith made the mistake to invite me to their show. We talk a good chunk about MLG and the meaning for WoW as an esports. Moreover we talk about the ESL problems mentioned above, about Rob Pardo's statement about WoW, about the latest GomTV event and about...Twilight?

I can honestly say, I have no idea who Edward Cullen is and I was forced to use his name! Add in my general awkwardness and you got yourself a statement that will make you want to put on your mom's panties. I promise. I hope you like tanga. Why do I know that your mom wears strings? Yes, exactly.

You can check out the episode here. You really should. Trust me. I'm a...drinker?

Dreamhack & WoW

What if it is time for Dream Hack winter and nobody attends?

That is of course a false statement as far as the overall event goes. A sick amount of CS teams have been invited and the competition in other games such as Quake will surely be amazing.

On the WoW side of things, the price money has been announced and it's 2800 Euro for the first place finisher. That is not much of a problem in itself but the reason why this is very problematic for the WoW tournament is that it was announced so late. Flight & Hotel prices significantly increases the longer you have to wait for the booking and it so happens that I haven't heard of a single quality team going to Dream hack so far.

Yours truly thought about attending the event, but only a flight both ways is already 600 Euro from Düsseldorf to Jönköping. A month ago, the prices were probably around half of this. The alternative of going by train is not that much cheaper, but takes 24 hours for me to get there. In conclusion, no Yiska at Dream Hack.

SK.EU probably won't go and as it looks Hydra's team of Godmode won't be able to attend as well. If you go there on your own expenses and even if you finish 1st, chances are you spend more than you won in that tournament if you aren't a local. It's simply not worth it, not even for sponsors as the coverage and the community interest in Dream hack is really not that high.

The only rumoured known name so far seems to be Bloodx and his team. If you know Bloodx or rather his reputation, you understand why this might become a "fun" tournament. Let's just say Bloodx makes Inflame look like Harry Humble or Mike Modest.

It's just sad that so many amazing teams will have to miss out on those events (both ESL NA continentals and Dream hack) just because the way these tournaments were set up up were not really player or sponsor friendly. Getting your stuff together a month before the tournament starts goes a long way.

Ghingis with a new guide

Ghingis the great released another part of his guide over at Bartov gaming. Most Europeans will agree that Ghingis is a very good warlock who not only knows how to play the game, but also understands how to talk about it. I had the pleasure of having him in ventrilo during MLG Anaheim and his insight was spot on.

If only Trig wasn't such a ***** and Nx such a slacker and their team could really make things going. They are currently 5th on Cyclone EU with their Wizard cleave and very solid 84% winratio. Therefore his guide is mainly about their line up of MLS and how especially a warlock should play against the most common comps.

You can check out his guide here. It's pretty long, but definitely worth a read.

As I'm about to visit my family, I don't have the time to wait for le shader to proof read this. Yiska out.

Mods & Why You Shouldn't Use Them, The Prince Of Qatar, IEM In Dire Straits

no.spam@gameriot.com (Zilea) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:39:09 -0500

Mods & Why You Shouldn't Use Them

This week I came back to 2v2 because I was bored (and because my 3v3 team got reset so I had nothing better to do) and I was hit with a revelation of why nobody should use mods.

After sitting through 3 minute queues I was getting matched up against a lot of really bizarre teams like enhancement shaman/priest, feral druid/priest, the list goes on. These matches were frustrating not just because of the team lineups we were running up against, but because of the mods.

Against these teams, whenever I needed or decided to divine plea, I would get it purged immediately (before even a single tick). Even if I strafed out of line of sight right when I used it, it was too late as it got taken off within 2 seconds of being used. The funny part about this is that against the top players like Kollektiv, if I decide to pop divine plea out in the open, I will typically be able to get at least 2 divine plea ticks off, sometimes even a full divine plea. Against 2200 rated teams? Divine plea is off without a single tick if I am not already sitting behind a pillar. It may not sound like a big deal and people will argue that I should just stay behind a pillar, but sometimes a paladin can not afford to do that and has to be in line of sight to cleanse, freedom, heal, you name it.

As anybody knows, a lot of players get carried heavily by mods. I'll admit I was one of these people. With my spellalerter, afflicted and gladius, I was able to keep an eye on everything simply by looking at a mod. For those that aren't aware, these mods can easily carry you through tough spots by letting you know everything without actually keeping track of anything yourself. Actually, this is where the criticism of "always looking at mods, never the battle field" spawned.

Generally speaking, I've been pleased that significantly less people use mods than they used to. I look at streams on an infrequent basis but I see a lot of people running with few or no mods at all, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, however, some people, like Affix, are notorious for using mods. In Affix's case, he's actually getting more mods, not less. Frightening to think that this guy could have very well gone to a tournament (although I admit the hilarity of watching somebody adjust from all those mods to zero is entertaining).

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my problems with mods as people can have similar mods to tell them when counterspell, kick, pummel, etc are off cooldown.

Don't do it, kids! Turn off those mods! It builds character! It also helps you play better in the long run by forcing you to watch everything around you in an arena match.

WoW Sideshow - The Prince of Qatar

For those that may not be involved in the esports scene, you may not be aware of a guy named "Ooi", also known as the prince of Qatar. Pretty much every top or high-recognition arena player has been in contact with this guy at one point or another. Basically, he is the prince of Qatar and has an absurd amount of money due to, obviously, being a part of the royal family.

What he is most known for is giving players an exorbitant amount of money to play with or for him to get arena points every week (and, incidentally, proving why a lot of middle eastern countries are failed or collapsed states; use all of that oil money on infrastructure and jobs and not on the elites you dimbulbs).

Nobody really knows why he hands money out like this. Maybe he is just a lonely individual, but the cash he gives out is a lot higher than you may think as Yog, Sonydigital, Pookz, Twix, Valrath, Veev and many others including myself have all been paid to be a part of this cartel. Although I haven't really been involved with the guy in a while, the amount of money paid out is easily close to a grand just for playing 10 games a week. For end-of-season gladiator titles? Over $500. For rank 1 titles? Over $2000.

If you play on Blackrock and have been wondering why Pookz, Valrath and several other players have transferred off, the reason is money. An insider reported to me recently that Yog was paid $4000 to transfer his character to Ooi's server and has been getting paid $800 a week for some time now.

God only knows how much account sharing is going on as not everybody always transfers their characters to play with/for Ooi for money.

Does the prince of Qatar have the resources to pay off Blizzard employees from account action?

IEM In Dire Straits

The Intel Extreme Masters tournament, hosted by ESL, has been going on for a while now, and a lot of people are really interested to see what the competition will look like. As you may remember from my previous articles, I've been reporting on a lot of internal problems within the organization when it comes to their WoW tournaments, and this one is no different.

To give an update on how this tournament is supposed to play out, I'll explain: 8 teams (sponsored teams) were automatically invited, with 8 spots remaining, which would be designated to the top 8 teams in an online qualifier which would last severel weeks (the past severel weeks were this perio) with teams signing up to compete for a chance to go to the regionals event in Edmonton, Canada, followed by the global finals event in Hannover.

After the online qualifier, the top 8 teams from the online ladder will compete against the 8 invited teams, with the top 8 teams representing the US being invited to the IEM US.

That is where we stand today. Tonight the qualifiers entered the phase where the 8 sponsored teams would compete with the top 8 teams from the previous phase. By the end of the weekend the top 8 of those 16 would be granted invitation to the regionals on December 11 in Edmonton.

However, word is from several teams actually participating in the tournament that the ESL tournament realms have been barren, with virtually nobody queueing. A few players from some of the notable teams told me that people in the previous phase were grinding to the top of the ladder by beating random no name players because everybody's MMR was extremely low due to lack of activity on the realms.

"well the event is supposed to be december 11th but the online ladder was super inactive the whole time and there's supposed to be the top 8 teams from ladder vs the top 8 invited to qualify for the event but there won't even be 8 real teams and the US ladder was completely dead, no one played.
theres probably not even 8 US teams that can get to edmenton, especially on this short notice"

It also appears that the entire tournament is really unorganized, with the qualified teams not even having been notified yet nor have matches even been scheduled for this weekend.

The current standing, as some speculate, has the team consisting of players named Lafu, Lyricals and Fadingaway in first place running beastcleave and paladin/dk/hunter. Many people do not even know who these players are, giving credit to the previous claim that random teams are getting to the top. The reason, as already explained is due to such low activity on the tournament realms with people farming off of really bad, low teams and getting a lot of points. Remember, the ESL realm isn't live; teams aren't 2800 rated.

The core of the problem is that few unsponsored teams want to bother competing for a tournament when the flight fees, room and board, etc are not covered by anyone other than the actual team, making them front the bill. We're talking about over a thousand dollars here and remember, the prize money won't even begin to cover all of these fees unless you place well.

After these "US Regionals" in Edmonton, Canada, which is scheduled for December 11, the top teams of that event will go to the global finals in Hannover. Again, nothing is paid for by ESL so you are on your own.

What a bad idea. The regionals on December 11? I know for a fact that final examinations for me, Sodah and a bunch of other players is the week following directly after that.

There is much speculation that we will see either very bad teams appear at the regionals in Edmonton or there will simply be a shortage of teams (and it could very well just be the exact same teams that participated at MLG Anaheim).

Midnight Riders DLC coming to Left 4 Dead 2?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:50:33 -0500

My Left 4 Dead 2 review should be coming early next week but in the mean time you can hold yourself over with some awesome news regarding the southern-rock quartet, the Midnight Riders.

Those of you that have played through Dead Carnival may have had the joy of playing the finale featuring the rocker's stage act and pyrotechnics show at the end of the campaign. There are numerous references to the band through the course of the campaign and it all peaks with you slaughtering the zombie horde on the stage where the band was supposed to rock out.

So what does that have to do with the above motley collection of rockers? It seems our good friends at Valve opened up a website dedicated to the band at Midnight-Riders.com. What happens when Valve opens up game-related websites? Generally we end up getting some form of DLC. This isn't your typical one page class update ala Team Fortress 2 either. It is a full-fledged mock-band site with tour dates, blog, about the band, and a shop which interestingly leads to an awesome Midnight Riders shirt at the Valve Store.

I suspect this is a quasi-announcement for some future DLC featuring the band. Normally when Valve drops a web update like this the DLC is isn't very far out. Left 4 Dead 2 just came out however so I don't think we will see whatever this content may be right off the bat. What exactly Valve has in store for us has yet to be revealed. I presume we will at least be getting new character skins and considering the detail they put in to the website I suspect this will be a new campaign as well featuring the band. Don't fillet me for being wrong as this is just an educated guess.

It seems the "platform" they have promising with this game may finally come to fruition. The news will surely get even better for those of us who own this on PC as it will most likely be free content per typical Valve updates. Those of you on the 360 can enjoy busting out the debit card to get your hands on the probable new content.

But if this is the future of Left 4 Dead 2, with new characters and campaigns, consider me sold. Now if only they get around to porting over and bringing the original maps and characters to the Left 4 Dead 2 engine like some crafty modders have pulled off. That is something I would really like to see. I can see it now, Zoey chainsawing a Spitter on the wing of an airplane in Dead Air. Yup, sold!

Midnight Riders DLC coming to Left 4 Dead 2?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:51:19 -0500

The Life On The Outside, A Perspective From The Real World

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:21:32 -0500

Because I just can't take this **** anymore. There's no point. It's not even fun.

August 8, 2009. My last blog until this one.

I doubt anyone who read that thought I was being serious. Like everyone else, you probably thought to yourselves: "*sigh* Another one having an emo-rage after facing a prot-pally"

And yeah, that's what I had. But, things took a strange turn.

After this date, I just stopped logging into the World of Warcraft. And this is my story since. A story about IRL.

But let me start from the beginning.

So I once again started the university after failing due to WoW the first time. This time I figured "Currently I'm in a cool social guild with friends so I can keep it on a casual level and still handle my studies".

Well, Wotlk was ****, so I really had no excuse not to follow my plan, but just like you, I am a WoW-aholic. I just can't log out. I need to find that perfect partner for my PvP-teams and I need that gold to enchant that gear for the minor PvE-there is, so I don't have to focus on mana when healing, aka don't have to focus at all when PvEing.

But after that x.x.x patch something, when Prot Pallys was still viable, I just gave up. I wrote that blog and just stopped logging in. I didn't really think I would quit WoW, but I didn't log in for a while.

It hit me one day, about a week after I stopped loggin, when I was at my uni and noticed this familiar girl sitting at a computer close to me. She was asian, and I knew I recognized
her from somewhere... I thought to myself.. "Is it from WoW... MING!?.. No, can't be.. It's a girl.. or can it? no... ESTEL!?... Hmm, no, that doesn't seem realistic since I havn't seen a pic of her yet..."

Then it hit me.. Yes...!
It was sk-aNNa!

sk-*******-aNNa was sitting next to me noobing at a computer.

I immidiatly thought to myself "OMFG; this'll definatly win me those $500 for the top blog.". I could see it in front of my eyes. "Stalking sk-aNNa. +374 likes".

But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't give a ****. I didn't care about writing anymore, I didn't care about expressing my opinions about WoW (Yes, you can be sure I would put in some pala-hatred in that entry such as "She was as real as the Pala-3-key-2k-arena-point-method"). And I just realized that it was over.

The 4 years of prison had finally ended. I didn't want to log into my account.

Wow. WoW. Wow. It's over.

So what's IRL like?

Well, first off, I want to say that this is in no way an entry where I'm trying to say "I'm better than you, I don't play WoW, you shouldn't either, nerd!". I know just as well as you do that when I played WoW, that was what I wanted to do. That was what I thought was fun. I respect people that do what they themselves WANT to do, and even though I won't encourage it, WoW can surely bring a lot of fun. So please don't hate on me for writing an "IRL"-entry. I'm merely trying to bring a perspective. I know I won't get many likes since everyone will probably hate me for going all "Oh this isn't a blog about wow, it's a blog OUTSIDE wow", but... Well.. So be it...

If nothing else, someone will get something to waste their time on on a friday evening. Yes, I've quit WoW but im still here at 1:22 on a friday night, blogging. Well, it's because I have en exam on monday. These days I study. I can't go out/play wow the whole weekend if I have an exam on monday. That's the first lesson I've learned. If you have an exam, focus on it. I've went from a C/D-avarage to an A/B-avarage, simply because I choose to study these days. I never feel the "I need to raise my rating before reset" or "I need to get a flask before raid".

Some people can handle the "I can seperate my IRL from WoW". I couldn't. If you can't identify yourself with this, please don't put myself in your shoes, but rather keep reading just for that great joke you think might come eventually, since you've found one of my earlier entries to be somewhat hilarious.

So this opened a whole new world. As with every drug, you play WoW when you have nothing else to do. I think I've mentioned this before. No, when I played I never identified WoW with a drug, and I won't go into that discussion because I think its rediculous. But as with every drug some people might identify with a drug, it's something you do when you're bored. Instead of learning, developing yourself or making new social contacts, you spend that time enjoying your drug. And of course you're enjoying the drug. It's a drug.

In IRL you do what you have to do. You attend family-birthdays, sometimes when your used-to-be best friend has a birthday you might be there aswell unless you have a raid. When being out you make sure you get to point X, perform task Y and get home as soon as possible to get back into the real world, Azeroth.

Now, once again, I'm not saying WoW is anything like the "real" drugs, but depending how you identify a drug, it's still a drug. And no, to most of you I still don't call WoW a drug, it's just a reference point. There are similarities, I know you agree about that.

So it was astonoshing.
I read this article yesterday about this guy from Australia accidently getting lost with this car, driving 60 miles in the wrong direction.. The papers somehow caught up to it (Ask yourselves: How?) and eventually asked him why he didn't get a GPS.
He replied: -With a GPS you can't get lost. What's the fun in that?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I played WoW I was very well stuck in this "Get from X to Y as fast as possible and then back to Azeroth" that I forgot to enjoy the trip. And, yes this is gonna sound cheesy, I forgot about the travel, which is life.

I'm still shrugging about that last sentence but I'm gonna let it be and conclude it right here..

Btw, I know I owe you guys 2/2 of our guild-night-out, but... I can't currently promise you anything. I guess it depends on how well this one is recieved which I guess will be.. Yeah, pretty low odds...

And I'm sorry. No pictures, no jokes, no nothing. Just some reflections.

Now I just emptied the bottle, and this entry didn't really take the direction I though it would take. It feels more like a speech on why to quit WoW rather than what happened to me after I quit but.. The more I think about it the better... Because Blizz pretty much took the best 4 years of my life and turned it into a world filled with elves, ganks, unbalance, easy-mode and farming, and thus became my nemesis.

So tbh, this entry has turned into "Here's a fun read" to "******* god christ I hate you Blizzard for going so ******* commercial that if this ****-entry only inspires one person to quit WoW it'll be ******* worth it."

Well... I guess I'll see you in a year or so....
To hell with it...

Slap's Take: Modern Warfare 2 Review

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:56:37 -0500

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the biggest launch in the history of video games. I've covered this already so we should probably get that out of the way from the start. If sales were the ultimate indication of quality we wouldn't need reviews, opinions or any of that jazz. Thankfully they aren't and we have positive-proof in that regard taking in consideration things like the Transformers movies and the Sims games. Therefore today you get to read my impressions of Modern Warfare 2 and flame or praise accordingly.

Modern Warfare 2 is built on three gameplay modes: Spec Ops, Campaign and Multiplayer. The latter two are fairly obvious but Spec Ops is a new take for COD on a older concept which I will delve in to later. The whole package is impressive. There is quite a bit of gameplay here with all three modes bundled together though there is little doubt that mulitiplayer is the meat and potatoes of this game.

I remember when games used to have epic single-player story lines that sprawled multiple days with hours and hours of gameplay - this is not that game. Not to take anything away from the story as it is quite good, it's just short, really short. Consider it a quick way to toss away 3-5 hours depending on what difficulty you play it on. If you are buying this for single player you will surely be disappointed. I really enjoyed the story though I won't spoil anything for you. You have seen the videos, the locations and maybe this super spoilerific video (you have been warned, this link is a huge spoiler).

The single-player features an awesome musical score and graphics that will have you trying consume it all in the middle of a massive firefight. That obviously isn't the best of decisions, especially in the harder difficulties, but audibly and visual it really is fantastic. The snow-capped mountains of Kazakhstan, the scaling and destructible urban environments and the arid brown-tainted locations all provide unique battlegrounds and eye candy.

There are improvements over its predecessor that should be noted even if you barely see them within the 5 hours. First up is the "infinite spawn points" that were a corner stone of the last game are seemingly nowhere to be found. Infinity Ward noted in the past that this was something they wanted to fix and it seems they came through. A.I. has also been improved from audible cues to just being generally overall more functional. This is a welcome addition from the last game though they still aren't quite perfect.

Spec Ops is the last of the modes I managed to get to as I just got around to it last night. In a nutshell think of Spec Ops as a challenge mode so to speak. You have seen challenge maps in Batman Arkham Asylum, or historical challenges in Madden games; this is a similar concept. The mode tosses a bunch of objectives with increasing difficulty and complexity at you in stand-alone missions so to speak. There really isn't a story and it's just you, some guns, a partner if you choose and some objectives. It is MOW2 stripped down to its basic gameplay elements and I am really enjoying it so far.

Last night we got stuck on the bridge map trying to push across it on Veteran with an attack chopper trying to turn us in to Swiss cheese all while fending off the opposition that was also storming the bridge against us. It is intense, frantic and a blast to play with friends which I highly suggest. Spec Ops is a welcome addition though I would have traded it in for a much longer single-player story.

And of course we can't forget about multiplayer. This is what almost everyone buys Call of Duty and Modern Warfare for. I am not going to address features excluded from the game so if you are looking for more ranting about the PC changes then you are in the wrong place. Regardless of my thoughts on changes vs. past incarnations of the game it is still a blast to play. Is lean gone? Yes it is. Does it hurt the game? No, but it does change it and promotes faster, less-camping gameplay if you ask me.

I am horrible at multiplayer, make no doubt about it. I think I am up to Level 24 with a K/D ratio sub 1:1. Mikevercetti is amazing however, and he is great at stealing my kills as well. I still haven't adapted to using ****ty analog sticks in a FPS game and I probably never will. I caved this time around thanks to my IRL friends wanting to play this with me. With all that going against me I am still having fun getting my ass kicked and pulling off some solid kills. Much like titles including TF2, L4D2, Counter Strike, etc. it is the fun community aspect of playing with friends and some of those "oh ****" moments that keep me coming back. Rarely have I gone 4-14 in a round of any FPS game and still had a good time but MOW2 pulls it off which is a testament to how fun the multiplayer is.

MP is deep. There are a crap-load of guns to work your way through, various challenges within the mode that help you level up, give you more perks and make you a bigger badass as you progress. I am eyeballing a M16 right now but I have another 16 levels before I get there.

The MP game is not without its flaws however. Why the hell can't we choose what maps we want to play on? There should be no reason to be stuck playing maps that haven't really taken off with players. The lobby system is shoddy as hell at this point often taking too damn long to match you up, closing rooms, kicking people out for now reason, etc. The limit on players also bothers me. Some of these maps could easily support more than 6v6. The 9v9 domination maps could also handle some more players as well. I guess I really miss that aspect coming from someone who thrives on 16v16 TF2. I am not totally sold on the kill streak system as I feel there are some balance issues there though maybe people just haven't adapted to them yet. The helicopter gunship attacks are brutal and seem way too powerful. Care packages seem almost useless more often than not. And by the way, I fricken hate those gunship attacks just in case I didn't make that clear.

Even with these issues I see this becoming a staple of my multiplayer online action for the foreseeable future. There are flaws but the overwhelming amount of content in MP from maps, guns, additions, challenges is icing on an already sharp and entertaining package.

This is not a perfect game. Single player is too short; multiplayer has its own share of bugs and issues. Regardless of issues it does all come in a very entertaining package with a lot of value if you get in to all of the modes. Don't buy this for single-player alone.

Much like my next big review (L4D2) if you aren't playing this with friends I think the overall experience takes a hit. Sure there is a touch of single-player here and you can run around capping fools online all by yourself but just how much fun is that?

The game really isn't all that different from Call of Duty 4 either. Some new maps, locations, a quick storyline, and then you pretty much get multiplayer with a few changes. That isn't a bad thing because the last game's multiplayer was excellent and the game as a whole was well regarded.

I definitely recommend this as a "buy" if you are looking to really get in to some multiplayer action and am not hung up on a lack of lean or dedicated servers. The consolization of the series is here to stay and we can either embrace the game for what it is now or hold on to the glory days and play older titles. I am not denying Activison and Infinity Ward seemingly took numerous steps to piss people and change the status quo. But if you can get past gripes and play the game I think most of you will find it enjoyable if you judge it on its own merits and not the past or other games. Personally I am always looking for new quality games and this fits the bill of providing hours and hours of future entertainment.

You are welcome to "stick it to the man" if you like but based on its merits Modern Warfare 2 is a solid, yet slightly different, game in the COD series that deserves a spot in your collection.

PTR Testing Day 4: Lady Deathwhisper

no.spam@gameriot.com (Nomennescio) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:41 -0500

Good evening everyone and welcome to yet another episode of my PTR testing liveblog.
Yesterday went pretty bad, due to blizzard bringing down the servers just as we were about to start, we missed alot of our members aswell as two decent tanks, so we had to pug a tank and a dps.

As you may (or may not) know, the ptr is full of retards who are all pretending they know what they are doing, however they dont, and if you see a war with full stamina gems, that might indicate he knows his class decently, since stamina is indeed the best thing to stack nowadays, or hes just a retard who just turned all his blue gems into +20 stam ones and then randomly smashed them around his armor.

Ofcourse, both of the tanks we were forced to pug fit into the second category, so like I said, yesterdays raid was kinda ****** up, but lets not linger at the past and look forward to the future.

Lady Deathwhisper

Lady Deathwhisper is the second boss in ICC, and is right after Lord Marrowgar.
Her trash layout slightly resembles that of the second boss of Shadow Labyrinths, the 5-man instance in auchindoun we all hated during TBC.
Lady Deathwhisper has already been tested once, there you can also find all of her (and her adds) abilitys.

The fight is basicly seperated in two phases: In phase all she does is randomly shoot shadowbolts into everyone, trowsDeath & Decay around and has a huge mana shield that absorbs all incomming damage.
Every once in a while she will spawn a set of 3 adds on either side of the room: 2 casters and 1 melee add, these all have special abilitys and can be powered up.
While killing the adds, you also need to damage the boss to burn her mana and thus remove the mana shield.

Once her mana reaches 0% phase 2 will start.
In phase two she is a really weak copy of KT in naxx:
She mindcontrols (cc those who are mc) and she casts frostbolts that hit for 41k, these frost bolts must be interupted at all costs.
Since the adds will now stop spawning everyone should just concentrate on the interupting and on the boss herself, ofcourse you still have to keep moving out of the Death& Decay

My Xfire stream is still: http://www.xfire.com/live_video/nomennescios/
Also, were still looking for a new vent server to use, so if anyone owns one/knows one we can use please contact me or leave a comment

The Liveblog

19:33 Raid opens up, things are looking good we got ourselves a vent server and a good balanced group

19:45 We cleared first 2 groups off trash with np, everything going nicely so far even though dps is slightly slackish

19:58 We just wiped twice on the two big mobs, they have a raidwide aura that makes everyone take ~5k damage/3 secs, which is kinda hard to heal trough, aswell as a debuff which explodes for 15k to whoever is near the debuffed person

20:07 We just killed both of the big mobs by having one of our tanks go healing so we could heal trough the huge dps she does

20:18 We just had our second try on her, we tried just rushing down her health with BL up, but that didn't really work to well, since having more then ~5 adds up at a time really instakills your tanks

20:27 We got her mana pool to around ~15% this time before we wiped, so were defo making progress, but having random raid members get instagibbed is just really hard to get trough.

20:57 We just came back from a period of alot of dc's, fake dc's and people leaving, we have finally filled the raid back up again and I have now logged onto my protection warrior, think were looking fine as we got her to 1 mil mana left, but then one of the tanks (me) got oneshotted and it was a wipe

21:08 We just had one more try but it didn't really matter, as soon as we charged into the boss blizzard teleported us out of the instance: testing is over

I personally doubt that there will be much more testing and I expect the patch to land either this wednesday or the next.

If you have any questions regarding pve balance, pvp balance, new items or new quests on the ptr, feel free to ask them here and ill answer them to my best possible effort.

European Championship WoW starts/ And PICTURES!!

no.spam@gameriot.com (diejule) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:12:02 -0500

European Championship WoW starts - Finally! =)

sexy photo by David Huet

source: http://www.wallpaper-area.ch/wallpaper/sexy%20green.jpg

Thank you, David!

After announcing eight invited teams for the European Championship one month ago another eight World of Warcraft teams had to be determined via an ingame-ladder provided by Blizzard. During the last two weeks almost one hundred teams competed for the four available slots of the European Championship. Here are the eight winners of the qualification and the official groups of the Intel Extreme Masters European Championship.

Qualified via ingame ladder
Rocknroll pigtails - Rating: 1892
Emo Whoopass Patrol - Rating: 1888
Pincho.wow - Rating: 1885
Death Row - Rating: 1851
RNG PARTY- Rating: 1850
Itsallgoodnahmean - Rating: 1844
No Surprises- Rating: 1841
pwning noobs all day long- Rating: 1839

Invited teams
iNNERFiRE WoW
SK Gaming WOW PvP EU
aAa
GODMODE
plan B SKY.wow
SK GAMING Sansibar
x6tence.wow
BRB ICE CREAM TRUCK

The European Championship consist of four groups of four teams. The winner of each group will advance to the European Championship Finals, while the second and third placed will play relegation matches. All in all, the top eight teams in Europe will be seen live in the offline finals taking place 2010.

4x4= 16

=)

Group A GODMODE SK GAMING Sansibar RNG PARTY Itsallgoodnahmean		Group B Rocknroll pigtails aAa x6tence.wow BRB ICE CREAM TRUCK

Group C iNNERFiRE WoW Pincho.wow No Surprises pwning noobs all day long		Group D SK Gaming WOW PvP EU plan B SKY.wow Emo Whoopass Patrol Death Row

Flame us http://www.esl-world.net/masters/news/106196/ here if you like to.

Or visit us 11th until 13th of December 2009 at the West Edmonton Mall in Canada at the American Championship Finals! http://www.esl-world.net/masters/news/105520/

more pictures @ www.flickr.com/photos/world_domination

BRB QUITTING, (FOR NOW.) LF CATACLYSM.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Meztag) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:19:45 -0500

I WAS LATE TO WRATH. REALLY LATE

But I’ve been around since pre-bc. I came back to my undead warrior Phillo, on US-Executus, after leveling 70-80 about 2 weeks ago. I, just got back and am already leaving again. Actually, I don’t like being late to x-pac, so hopefuly I’ll get here on time for Cataclysm and join my old guild Sonata of Executus, I miss those guys, and my guild leader Zharon was the BEST, he’s been arround forever.

WOW AND RL FRIENDS
I also have a 80 undead priest, Corpuschrist on the same server, who I played from june-july 09, but quit due to moving into a new house, and didn’t have access to internet. I only leveled him to do 2v2 for fun with my RL friend who plays Undead rogue Ruben. He got a bear mount run from Ropetown., and quit for 9 months shortly after. We had fun playing 2's, (isn't it always fun to do arena with RL friends), i'm not that good, nor would I even consider myself the ideal person to teach strats, or theory s, yet I was yelling at him.... but it was fun. Therefore I wanted to reserve my priest to be 80, if he ever decided to come back to wow.

BRB QUITTING, (FOR NOW.) LF CATACLYSM.

In October-November, I reactivated my account to level 70-80 on my warrior, to reserve my spot to start leveling when Cataclysm releases, and to play as much of Wrath as I could before subscription expired.

WHAT I FOUND IN WRATH
Many things… First, I found leveling was fun. No annoying people around, just me and my epic 70 gear to carry me through my quest, easily. When I hit 80 and started sizing myself up to the people who have been playing, I find how progressed everyone REALLY was and how much it sucked trying to pug heroics/nax/voa without getting doubted.

I laugh, and at the same time, rage when it comes to the non-tanking dummies who think that HP is the main tanking stat..... Also 1k dps is good for heroics, but people said minimum is 2-3. LOL. 2-3 is above average you lazy f***s.

When I get in groups to tank, it's guaranteed that one of the other bimbos notice my hp before we start the run.... "YOU'RE A TANK? YOU HAVE 22k HP? " Yeah fu**nuts, sorry I’m not one of the 485 overly geared tanks to do heroics. I understand they are probably tired of running heroics this late in the expansion, but if they help me get a few pieces. Maybe talk to me like a normal person, perhaps recruit me… could be friends in the long run, instead of labeling EVERYONE in blues bad, and not looking for that diamond in the dirt. Yeah I said it, I’m a diamond In the dirt.

HOW WERE THE RUNS NEWAY, DID YOU WIPE? LOL
I just told them to watch and learn, if we wiped, it wasn’t my fault. Lazy healers, fault. Or maybe if one one of the fa**ot dps in the group who couldn’t kill things fast enough, but had the balls to tell ME I was under geared.

After EVERY I done ran (about 10 heroics), I get whisper from someone in the group, saying WOW IM SURPRISED YOU TANKED THAT, or HEY JOIN OUR GUILD WE NEED TANKS... or something. No sh*T

1. I knew I’d, surprise you, by the way you doubted my HP.

2. F*** your guild. Only 1 guild on this server I would want to join and it’s not yours.

3. Want to run something else, stay in group or add me

Not that i'm saying i'm good or anything, but it's obvious that people have too high expectations of others. Which sucks, because it shouldn’t be about that? It should be about knowing the game’s program engine, its mechanics, and your own role in a group. Kind of odd to say that about wow, but it seems like a common.

HOW WERE HEROICS PRE RAIDS in WRATH?

My experience, raiding in wrath was lame, because everyone has a stick up their a** about having overpowered gear for a heroic.. but was **** always this lame? Was tanking heroics 10 months ago fun? I bet half of the healers that I ran, couldn't of lasted 10 months ago.

Epic Drop 11/20/09: Arrested for no tip, Hasan the terrorist, Chuck Returns, Climate research hacked, $100 million for a healthcare vote? Avatar and Survival of Dead

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:49:32 -0500

Keeley Day is here and cause for celebration. I don't envy the Brits much but they got really lucky with that bundle of goodness. This will be a wrap on the Epic Drop for the week so bring your A-game to today's discussion and hopefully some good links as well. +1 for zombies and CG-loving Cameron.

Arrested for not leaving a tip? These college students in Philadelphia were handcuffed and arrested for not leaving a $16.35 tip. The main issue of contention seems to be the mandatory "18% gratuity added to check for parties of 6 or more". They had over six friends with them though they suffered through horrible service: "They had to find their own napkins and cutlery while their waitress caught a smoke, had to ask the bar for soda refills, and had to wait over an hour for salad and wings, they told NBC10." Mandatory gratuity is complete bull**** as it should be solely based on the quality service.

"Chuck" finally has its return date set in stone which you may have seen announced last night during "The Office". January 10th (Sunday) is officially super-Chuck day as two episodes will air from 9-11pm and then the following day Chuck moves to its regular Monday time slot of 8pm. I am definitely excited for the return of Chuck. I may have lost out on T.S.C.C. but at least Chuck is back.

Finding pictures of Keeley showing off skin with her clothes on is actually a bit of a challenge

How much should it cost to buy a Senate health-care vote? 100 million dollars, would that do it for you? Check out this post on ABC in regards to the "reward" being giving to Louisiana moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu who is wavering on her support of Obama Care. Pretty convenient eh? Glad to see it is politics as usual here in the U.S.A. And if that wasn't enough Obama Care how about everyone having to pay a monthly abortion fee if you are on the national health-care plan? Regardless of your stance on abortion would you really want to be forced to pay for such a thing?

I am curious as to when we will stop calling this Hasan nutjob "Major" and refer to him as what he really is, a terrorist. The latest? Telling an al-Quaeda recruiter that "'I can't wait to join you' in the afterlife". This guy was a joke of a Major but he seems to have the terrorist role down pat. Drinkingwithbob may be a bit "out there" but he makes a valid point, the mainstream media seems to refuse to address him this way even though every single damn sign points to it accordingly.

Eminem's Relapse 2 is being delayed until next year which should come as little surprise to rap fans considering how late in the year it is. He plans on dropping it sometime in 2010 but in the mean he wants to tide you over with Relapse Refill in December, a rerelease of Relapse with 7 new songs including "Taking my ball" and "Forever" (the later sucks but Em's verse is ferocious). Hopefully Relapse 2 will lead to a tour next as Em is one of the few rappers I would care to see in concert (again).

The Hadley Climate Research Center, major supporters of global warming, seem to have a bit of egg on their face in recent days. A hacker gained access to confidential data and emails some of which clearly points to Hadley CRU fudging the numbers to portray things how they want them in particular the now semi-famous "hockey stick" graph which seemingly supported global warming. I can't wait to see how they react to this leak and what kind of justification they have for making their numbers "fit" with certain policy decisions.

Here is a interesting look at Avatar with some new footage as well showing off the human hardware. I have my concerns about this film plot-wise but it is still on the "to-watch list":

Avatar Movie Video - Exclusive Featurette: Human Hardware

Romero's Survival of the Dead is definitely looking better than Diary and while not as slick and flashy looking as Land he seems to get back to his roots as far as the look and feel of the film:

Later today my MOW2 review will be up so make sure you stop by and check it out.

Sony bringing 3D to PS3 with 2010 firmware update

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:24:21 -0500

3D gaming seems bound and determined to push in to the mainstream in one form or another. While a new concept on consoles other than tech demos the concept has been use with mixed success on platforms such as IZ3D's PC monitor to Nvidia's 3D vision it hasn't quite had a chance to succeed on the console front yet. Sony seems set to change all of that come 2010.

In a investor and media conference yesterday they highlighted some goals company wide on of their key pillars for success seems to be the inclusion of 3D and how they are uniquely able to bring it home for us gamers. You check out the full PDF here but I've added slides to this post as well. If you want some more technical details there is a solid read at Eurogamer that is a few months old before today's semi-big news.

The headline image may look a bit funny but the slide on the right seems to confirm that Sony's glasses will be more in line with the offering from Nvidia, their Vision setup, they crappy glasses we have all come to ignore. The other big is is that all Playstation 3's will be upgradable to through 3D via a free firmware update. That plus the HDMI 1.3 spec supported by the PS3 and their ties to their own TV line which will surely offer 3D at some point give them a decisive leg-up if this technology ever becomes mainstream. At this point the 360 just doesn't have the bandwidth capable over 1.2 HDMI to offer quality 3D even if they wanted to.

The connection between their console and TV or down the road while the technology is sent to pretty much any idea TV with the right specs via code over HDMI could be key in to making something happen on the 3D gaming front. Lets face it, 3D isn't exactly putting the PC gaming world on fire or anything.

I am not totally sold on 3D yet. No matter how normal Sony's or Nvidia's glasses may look they are still glasses. I just don't know that I can bring myself to consistently want to wear glasses while playing games, it just seems downright annoying. The technology would probably have to be mind blowing for me to consider it and for now the cost of a capable TV would also have to be factored in. While down the road any decent-spec-having TV may work, in the immediate future it will probably require a special line of Sony TVs. You won't be required to buy and use such technology but if it interests you it should be there and available to you sometime next year.

Ideally I would like to see a day when 3D setups require no glasses. Various companies have displays like that including 3M, Pioneer and more. The displays are far from mainstream at this point and I assume quite expensive. This is probably what it will require for 3D to hit it big though a time when gaming systems can send 3D to any decent HDTV will probably help.

In the mean I will wait with bated breath on this whole 3D thing in hopes that it becomes totally awesome so I have no excuse to not merge it in to my world of gaming or that its complete trash so that I can bypass it faster than the Virtual Boy.

GOMTV Named Season 3 Grand Finals Video: Button Basher In Action! PTR 10835: Deadly Poison Change Won't Save Rogues From 344 DPS Legendary Two-Hander's

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:58:13 -0500

Video Link: http://ch.gomtv.com/407/26729/329238/4

Requires Internet Explorer and installaton of GOMTV plug-in, and yes you have to sit through some Korean ads as well, well worth the effort however! Keep in mind the format is a mix of 1v1/3v3. You can go to the 47 minute mark to skip intros.

The red hot Button Bashers aka HON, fresh off their super impressive MLG Anaheim victory fought fellow Koreans at GOMTV season 3 finals. Unfortunately for them, they ran into a very unique team of protection warrior/retribution paladin/restoration druid in the grand finals.

Game 1, the protection warrior sat on Orange most of the times, but BB demonstrated the same clean crisp swaps from MLG Anaheim, from druid to warrior to paladin, given the amount of survivability their opponent has, and Orange shut down most of the game by the protection warrior, it is amazing how much damage pressure they dished out. Numberone continued to dish out heavy damage as priest and they finally brought down the paladin to go up 1-0.

Game 2 was 1v1 format with Orange as mage against opponent's feral druid (keep in mind GOMTV does not allow healer specs for its 1v1's). By taking advantage of pillars, instant cyclones and of course unlimited snare breaks, the feral druid simply turtled whenever Oranged popped his water elementals. Orange was forced to fight 1v1 and the feral druid was just too hard to get away from. Series tied 1-1.

Game 3 was 3v3 again this time on Nagrand, the protection warrior and retribution paladin put out more pressure on the priest this time around to stop his damage, and both turtled better. BB did the same amazing swaps and kept the warrior at 10% for a very long time, but a protection warrior is just too difficult to kill. Orange eventually ran out of mana and died. BB down 1-2.

Game 4 saw the super impressive rogue hero Hiren taking on the same feral druid who defeated Orange earlier. Arena rules with feral druid having access to water + shadow sight, rogue without food, it is supposed to be impossible to win against a feral with instant cyclone. Yet Hiren played so well with his keep aways, never got shouted out once, always landed his saps whenever the druid tried to grab shadow sight, bandaged behind LOS at perfect angles to avoid fairy fire, he managed to force a draw from one of the best feral druids out there as time ran out! He even had the momentum advantage when the match ended. Koreans have amazing internet connections, some of Hiren's surgical precision moves would be impossible with American pings. Score still 1-2, from here all matches will be 3v3.

Game 5 was on Dalaran again and played similar to previous matches. Protection warrior sat on Orange and really annoyed the hell out of him but BB caught the retribution paladin with a beautiful swap when he popped wings and brought him down. Orange was at low mana but they had just enough left in the tank to win. Series tied 2-2.

Final match on Dalaran again, as good as Orange is at avoiding insane beast cleave damage from X6, against the constant harassment of protection warrior he just couldn't get much hard casts going. Long game and he went out of mana in the end, and down for the count. Still a very good performance for Button Bashers but I think this protection warrior / retribution paladin and restoration druid should have no problem beating beast cleave and pretty much any comp that relies on sheer early pressure. BB loses in a thrilling 2-3 series.

PTR 10835: Deadly Poison Change Won't Save
Rogues From 345 DPS Legendary

After watching BB losing to heavy armor, it was clear that as amazing as Hiren is, he just can't do enough damage to a heavy armor team like warrior/paladin/druid. Blizzard gave rogues a superb PVE change with improved poison now offering 20% chance to proc deadly poison, up from 10%, and deadly poison procs at max stack now proc poison from the other weapon (instant or wound)!

Fully talented, a rogue will have 50% chance to proc deadly poison off a 1.4 offhand, and off envenom procs it goes up to 65%. Cheap shot to kidney, spare combo points on slice and dice and you should be able to get 5 stack deadly in no time. From there the target is taking 1200 damage from deadly poison every 3 seconds, your offhand deadly will now proc wound poison damage, throw in the big envenoms and we will finally do respectable damage against plate. It should give rogue/affliction lock/shaman a nice boost although I would argue heavy armor was never that team's problem to begin with.

The new 44/2/25 spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#f0ecoIgoirR0uZ0bZebfbc0db

And remember, against hunter armor and above, a single stack of deadly poison allows envenom to outdamage eviscerate at equivalent combo points.

Of course, Blizzard can easily change their mind and make this a PVE only buff by limiting deadly poison proccing other poisons at max stack to instant poison only. Although given how combat relies on wound poison, they will probably leave it as is. To be fair, against druid/shaman teams it will be very hard to maintain 5 stacks considering how much you will be kited/cced. The buff to improved poisons alone should give envenom the edge over eviscerate for good, as the biggest problem I had with full time envenom 44/2/25 was lack of deadly poison procs when I really needed it.

Heavy plate teams are not that common these days compared to wizard cleave so this is not the huge PVP buff that makes rogues imbalanced, but it will finally make 44/2/25 the definitive spec. I remember when no one wanted to use shadowstep, and Blizzard buffed it again and again and again until it became THE spec. The same thing is happening to envenom here. It was $hit, now it is the $hit.

Considering 3.3 will come out before season 7 ends, I am wondering if there may be an alternative to RMP for rogues looking for gladiator titles. My rogue/ret/priest team is seriously feeling the ceiling right now, and watching Furious Gladiator Euneek out of gladiator range with this comp pains me. They tried the ultimate rushdown rogue in Enforcer and even his sideway keyboard couldn't prevent a 100 point drop.

I don't have access to a quality mage or warlock who would choose rogue over wizard cleave at the moment, and it is really late in the season to make much roster changes. I will see if I can find a quality feral but most likely I will have to stick to the same comp rest of the way.

Of course, none of this will matter once we are up against 344 DPS 2 handers. I sincerely hope this requires beating Arthas on hard mode, difficulty equivalent of Yogg +0. To be fair, the season 8 two-hands will be around 318 DPS, the legendary here is the equivalent of season 9 weapon with a crazy proc. Imagine TSG with two of these?

L4D Eevee - Left 4 Last

no.spam@gameriot.com (HEYCHECKITOUTEEVEE) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:14:32 -0500

Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles: review incoming

no.spam@gameriot.com (JBoc) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:42:12 -0500

It has been an extremely long time since i've posted on this wonderful site but I'm finally back! And what a week it has been, it should have been coined "The Week of the Undead" seeing as how Left 4 Dead 2, Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles, AND most recently: RESIDENT EVIL 2 (finally!) have all been released within the span of a week. So apart from studying for exams I have been shooting down hordes of zombies across all three platforms, happy times.

But as the title of this short article suggests, yes, I will be composing a Darkside Chronicles review that should be up sometime this weekend, as soon as I clear it. But here are my current impressions:

The best on rails experience I , personally, have ever had. If only this was in the traditional gameplay style of Resident Evil norm then this would rank pretty high with the best of the series. I'm really appreciating how the story line is beautifully complimented by the awesome flash back scenarios. As opposed to Umbrella Chronicles, this doesn't feel like just a collection of shooting gallery levels, it actually feels like an authentic Resident Evil experience.

I just wrapped up the Resident Evil 2 scenario and the second Operation Javier mission, and am currently delving into the surface of the Code Veronica flashback. And I'm having an extremely good time doing it. There is one factor that I am really loving (but most people seem to despise) : the camera. It really does a very good job of immersing you into this interactive horror film. But enough of me blabbing on about this, I'm going to continue playing so I can deliver you guys my full detailed review.

Starcraft2.com updated with massive amounts of new content

no.spam@gameriot.com (Lipton) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:18:38 -0500

Seems during the quiet spell of lack of Starcraft 2 news, the Blizzard's web team has been busy at work updating the official Starcraft 2 website with tons of new content. Check it out:

We've just uploaded new intel to the StarCraft II website. This latest transmission sheds new light on the goings-on in the Koprulu sector and highlights key persons of interest associated with recent anti-Dominion activity. In particular, this content drop includes:

• Short Story: Changeling - Just because the years following the Brood War have so far been relatively uneventful, that doesn't mean it's safe out there in the cold vastness of space. Zeta Squad is about to find this out, the hard way. http://www.starcraft2.com/features/changeling.xml

• Singleplayer Storytelling - Discover the ways in which StarCraft II will expand the storytelling techniques of previous Blizzard titles in this article. http://www.starcraft2.com/features/gameplay/singleplayer.xml

• Multiplayer Mapmaking - Ever wonder what design considerations and decisions go into the many multiplayer maps of StarCraft II? Check out this article to learn more! http://www.starcraft2.com/features/gameplay/multiplayer.xml

• Character Biographies: Tychus, Zeratul, Raynor - The character biographies for Raynor and Zeratul have been updated with new art and additional info, and you can now also read up on Tychus Findlay, Jim Raynor's old comrade-in-arms.

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/heroes/tychus.xml
http://www.starcraft2.com/features/heroes/zeratul.xml
http://www.starcraft2.com/features/heroes/raynor.xml

• New Art and Screenshots - Check out more than 20 new screenshots and pieces of concept artwork! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks... check out all the new info now!

- Karune

source sc2pod

Week 11: A Cinematic Experience

no.spam@gameriot.com (celesis) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:51:36 -0500

Matches: 16 ( W 6 - L 10)

Thank you for the comments and constructive ideas posted in response to my Arena Sit and Go tournaments piece. I'm glad most of you liked the idea, my original intent of writing that blog was to get the idea out there in hopes that it may land in the right hands and maybe spark something up! Since then I've written another article depicting another PvP event idea which I think would be just as fun as the Sit and Go Tournaments. I will be posting it sometime during the next few days!

This week on the Slushy and the Squishies show...

All the warning signs were there, the darkening clouds, the brisk upheaval of once calm ocean waves the faint rumbling in the distance… I didn’t see the storm coming or I really didn’t want to. Up until this last week I had been cruising, carefree and enjoying the dancing of the arena waves; having a blast with teammates and friends. Ever since this ship set sail we’ve had a smooth ride, a couple of bumps here and there; the occasional arena rookie seasickness creeping from time to time but other than that it has been an enjoyable time. Until this week that is, the storm hit hard and it sent me overboard and into the furious sea… I was scared, there was nothing to guide me the sky was dark and I was struggling to keep afloat, a few meters behind my ship was being trashed by the waves, the 2200 was succumbing to the abusive waters and with it the easy times were slowly sinking.

Amid the mayhem there was a single glint of hope, a silhouette in the distance, land! It is far, more than a hundred times the distance between me and my sinking dreams but its offer of safety is better than staying put and floating hoping for a miracle. I slowly begin to swim…

And now a short commercial break!

2550, that is the number that plagues my mind and my dreams making them become nightmares. Is it an attainable rating? It has been almost 2 months since we got into the 2200+ rating range and we’ve yet to crack 2300. The past week we played 16 games and won only 6, yet we somehow gained 15 points. I played terrible, horrible the worst I’ve done since I began this project. I have regressed enormously and I’m not completely sure why. It could have been terrible luck as we encountered many teams that just destroyed me, fresh from the tournament we ran into a lot of Beastcleaves and TSGs and a good RMP. We’ve been defeating Wizard cleave, RLS and RMP fairly consistently but only found those a couple of times and it's reflected in our record for the week.

The major problem right now is that I don’t do enough damage when focused, for example TSG, having a Warrior right click me and strafe back and forth is super annoying in addition to a DK, his ghoul stun and every other possible thing that prevents me to pump damage out. On top of that they keep running through me to stop my casts, I really really really try to do my best and turn with my mouse along them as I cast even predicting where they may walk to next, but I still fail often.

Sometime during this the Warrior will Bladestorm, I have to port out and when I do I am confronted with two choices, do I spell lock the non-aura mastery heal the Paladin is throwing out and stay out of LoS until Bladestorm fades or do I spell lock the DK to avoid grip into the Bladestorm and use the time I have, with the distance I made, to put some damage into the target?

In either of the cases I will end up with a Warrior sticking to my face once Bladestorm is out the only difference is if my RNG caused the Paladin to bubble or not. Most of the times it won’t even force the bubble and after that it’s pretty much game over.

Beastcleave, I know, you know, we *all* know that it’s a tough composition to beat- there are some teams that run it where we can squeak by with a win but I usually get killed in the blink of an eye. Does it warrant further nerfs? Maybe. Beastcleave on the right hands is extremely deadly however not everyone has the skill to execute and just cruise their way into Gladiator range safe rating island.

We now return to the Slushy and the Squishies show...

The 2550 island and its offer of safety and comfort is what powers my swimming strokes in this relentless storm, I’m at my limit- I’ve been struggling back and forth being thrown around like a piece of drifting wood by the rating waves I cannot continue any longer. I can’t recall how or when my legs stopped kicking, my arms moving, my lungs breathing; I gave up and I am now slowly sinking into the deep dark ocean…

Until a gentle but firm hand grabbed my arm and clenched tightly, a second bone-y arm plunged in from above and helped pulling me out. My two teammates Ravasham and Sargaz were in a lifeboat, as I gasped for air the Rogue said- “Don’t give up just yet. We can make it to that island.” I looked up to him at the same time a paddle was placed into my hands by the Shaman: “We’ve carried you this far, from this point on you’ll have to paddle the same as us.”

I smiled, with focus and energy along with my trusty teammates I am sure we can make it. We slowly start paddling our way unto that safe land in the distance until then you will find us struggling in the arena storm together.

“yea eum you were going to drown there tho, why didn’t you use Unending Breath on yourself tho?” the rogue asked…

My reply: “Ooooh, good idea! I’ll try that next time™”

What Is Christmas Without Zombies?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Left4Bread) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:55:34 -0500

First I want to say Resident Evil 2 has been added to the US PSN store so go get that right now... Oh i'll wait....

...

...

...

...

Anyway, as far back as I can remember ( 3rd grade) I have received a new "Resident Evil" game or a newer version. (side note: what parent gets a child in third grade such a scary game?) It's just not Christmas to me with out Resident Evil. It's Just something about snow and brains that gives me that warm fuzzy feeling.

I can't wait till they release Resident Evil 3 and Dino Crisis which are promised to be released before Christmas.

But does anyone feel this way too?

Key to fixing out of control damage, What I think Blizzard should have done with Arenas.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Nomaq) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:43:34 -0500

#1 What I think Blizzard should have done with Arenas.

Top 5 reasons why I think this is a good idea:

1. Everyone is equal and on the same playing field.
2. Casuals and PVErs actually get to experience arena with adequate gear.
3. Blizzard gains a boatload of casual subscriptions. PvP community gains more competition.
4. PvE gear is no longer a factor in Arena.
5. Gear does not determine the outcome of matches. Player skill does.

Here's how it works:

Instanced "Arena Queuing" areas of WoW are designated where people gather to participate in arenas (eg Dalaran Sewers could be one of the instanced areas).
In these designated areas level 80's can enter and access ALL arena vendor gear and vs each other on an equal playing field all in equal gear (think mini instanced tournament realm).
PvE Gear cannot be used in arenas. The gear provided must be used.
Players gain rating, and arena points just like the current system and work towards "unlocking" their gear by achieving the necessary rating / point requirements.
Gear is unlocked by visiting an arena vendor and clicking on "I'd like to unlock armor" and then selecting the piece of armor they'd like to unlock if they have the adequate requirements (honor, rating, arena points etc).
The honor/rating/arena point system remains the same as what is currently required for purchasing armor on live realms. This means players still have to participate in BG's etc if they wish to unlock offset pieces.
"locked" pieces would have your standard fugly looking models (e.g. Deadly Armor Model), while unlocked pieces would have their model changed to something more epic, (e.g. Relentless Armor Model). This is so good players can instantly be recognized from bads. All gear has the same stats.
Once the gear is unlocked, it can be taken outside of the designated instances and is essentially the players to keep.
While in designated arena areas you can save your sets with the equipment manager. This is so that you can keep your gear setups while you're still unlocking gear. For example: if you leave the instanced arena queuing area when you haven't unlocked anything you'd go back to your rags, but when you come back later, you can simply reload your saved gear setup and get back to Arenaing.

Everyone is equal, yet there is still an incentive to participate in battlegrounds and gain rating/arena points in order to "earn" the gear and take it outside designated instanced arena queuing areas.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#2 Fixing the out of control damage issue:

Give everyone a permanent buff while in arena that increases stam by x%. This will slow down damage in arenas and also not affect the rest of the WoW "universe"; PvErs wont cry about "stam too high on pvp gear" etc, PvPers wont cry about being global'd. Blizzard can tweak the buff for each bracket as they see fit to keep out of control damage in check.

I hope this all makes sense, if not comment and I will try to clarify.

I look forward to any constructive criticism / suggestions.

I don't care for trolls, or if you don't like my idea. It's meerly just a suggestion I thought I'd throw out there.

-Nomaq

Call of Duty is big business - A Movie, sales and a new developer?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:35:18 -0500

Modern Warfare 2 is a bit over a week old now and it has been a resounding success for Activision and Infinity Ward both on the sales front and with the critics as well. For some fans it is a mixed bag, largely due the "consolization" of the PC version, but for most the game is a hit. My review is finished and I'll be sure to toss it up for your critical consumption tomorrow some time.

The release of the game hasn't stopped the Call of Duty news flow. First up is word from the Hollywood front. Current rumors from Kevin McKidd, aka Captain "Soap" MacTavish in Modern Warfare 2, is that a Call of Duty movie is in the works and he may be brought in to reprise his role for the feature film. Now this is obviously from an actor who has little pull behind the scenes when it comes to studios and financing so we probably have to take this with a grain of salt. Activision has mentioned a desire in the past to take Call of Duty to the silver screen so it may not be a total stretch.

I am not really sold on another video-game-to-movie adaption, especially with the budget that is going to be required to make this a faithful transition to film. There are tons of fantastic modern war films that this will be held up against like Saving Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down so whatever studio picks this up has their work cut out for them.

Rumors out of the L.A. Times has a mention of a third developer taking up the reigns of the Call of Duty series as well. According to the Times:

"Nonetheless, the publisher has aggressive expansion plans for Call of Duty. Although Infinity Ward and Treyarch have produced sequels in alternating years since 2005, the publisher now has a third development studio working on future versions..”.

Will another developer join Infinity Ward and Treyarch in making new Call of Duty games? Will they move to a new-every-three system for each studio? It could also be that we see the often talked about COD MMO coming out of these rumors or the new studio could simply be working on PSP/iPhone/DS versions.

And just in case you were curious as to how big the launch of Modern Warfare 2 was check out these figures from IGN. The game did 550 million dollars in its first week beating:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince's 5-day world-wide total
The Dark Knight's 5-day domestic total
Grand Theft Auto 4's previous hold on 5-day sales
And more sales first day than GTA4 had as well.

Check out the link for more details on the figures including some impressive Xbox Live numbers contributed by Microsoft as well.

What game could top these numbers? It would almost have to be a multi-platform release to top these numbers as I don't see an exclusive pulling these kinds of numbers. Grand Theft Auto 5 maybe?

RE 5: Alternative Edition New Enemy

no.spam@gameriot.com (ShadowOne333) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:18:22 -0500

Capcom has once again updated their official Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition.
This time, some new pics about a new enemy that will appear in the Spencer State Chapter following both Chris and Jill.

To some RE fans and veterans, the character might look somewhat familiar, as it shares some resemblance to the Resident Evil Remake enemy Lisa Trevor, notice both the hunchback, skin decoloration, feetcuffs and chains.

Perhaps this new enemy might be the enigmatic and misterious character, George Trevor protecting the new Spencer State?

Share your thoughts about who the new enemy is!

Official Site:
http://www.capcom.co.jp/bio5/ae/index.html

Racism and My Failed Journey to China, How Good Shaman Play, Residual MLG Thoughts

no.spam@gameriot.com (Bodi) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:13 -0500

It's Been A String of Interesting Lessons Post-MLG
I find that life has a lot in common with PvP. I mean, you gotta set up the burst. You play it aggressive or defensive sometimes. You can choose to blow your load at the beginning and ride the momentum up or you can do it with finesse. Set up CC, set up the burst and then score the kill.

Sometimes, you make 8 different decisions every second and you have no choice but to be right on every single one because one slip up means you just ride the momentum down. I guess we as young men, we are at that point in our lives where we're trying to determine what strategy to use because the gates have just opened and some of us don't even know what comp we're playing on or against and others are playing with alt +z pressed without even knowing it.

There are differences, of course. For our accomplishments, here are no asterisks, only scoreboards. There's the Universal RNG factor of course. If I had a choice, would I have rolled gnome or human instead? It's not even worth considering. When it comes to things you can't control you just roll with what you've got.

Right now I'm at the top of my game. I work 60+ hour weeks, I travel often, I make a good salary in a flexible position that allows me to do pretty much anything in my life. However, I got a reminder that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much money I may have, how much travel or world experiences I have under my belt.....because of certain physical attributes I possess, I'll still be branded as no better than the negative stereotypes that walk the streets of my old neighborhoods. Stereotypes that I've fought against tooth and nail my entire life.

I have to face it, If I were white, I'd still be meeting Sophie in China on some reckless and romantic journey to find......something that wasn't in my little corporate office in Beverly Hills. What can I do when she tells me that because of her own naive views of her fiercely traditional Chinese parents that she lost out on something could have been amazing? Not a damn thing. It's like when I fight against a good RMP that trains me at the beginning of the game so I have to pop all cooldowns to live and they simply CC me and kill my rogue.

Sometimes, your own weaknesses and flaws get to you on top of the things that you can't control. A little while ago, I took out a woman to a nice restaurant to use my try and true method of setting up the Flame Shock so I can Lava Burst later in the evening or perhaps that week. She dispelled the Flame Shock immediately. She actually did it several times and I wasn't able to close the deal. Later that week it was revealed to me that I was too aggressive and overconfident months before I'd even gotten to that point, and it severely impeded my chances of grinding up the required reputation with her.

If you take away nothing else from this portion of the entry, take this: sometimes, you can find parallels in anything that's important to you. When we play WoW, it can be much more than an exercise in moving your mouse fast and trying to maximize your GCDs and effective APM with pixels that can be deleted easily. It's all in what you make it.

Stepping Up Your Game
I had the opportunity recently to play with someone very close to me in game and found myself in a situation where the person, while filled with great potential, was simply not used to playing the game at the level I'd become accustomed to. It's a common frustration many have expressed with real life friends, girlfriends and supposed Merciless Gladiators who actually bought their accounts.

So I'm left with the decision of continuing playing with this person and working with them to improve their play even as I strive to improve my own or....finding other people to play with who I'd be more comfortable with making that last minute Gladiator push with in coming months.

I'm already notorious for team hopping every week in 3s because I like to play with everyone so I decided to keep up with this, while concurrently keeping him on my list of players to rotate around with.

I'm far from being a perfect player. Having the opportunity to look over Douja and Tenderloin's shoulder at MLG it gave me a play by play view of how two of the best shaman play. I was shocked at how defensive they were to my (sometimes overly) offensive style. There were a few games where Douja barely shocked or purged at all, instead playing it low key and keeping his positioning to where it was very difficult for him to be switched to as he healed. There was a more deliberate patience to their shaman play that I found myself lacking.

You don't have to shock EVERY cast. You don't have to purge everything. But, when you do have the opportunity to safely play offensively, do so and do it better than anyone else. There have been times where I've been so tunnel visioned on shocking a warlock or mage and keeping myself in a constant position to do so and I end up in a bad spot to be switched to immediately. It was the first good lesson for me in what turned out to be a string of lessons in life for me this week.

I guess sometimes, when you feel like you're at the top of your game and you've never been this good before, that doesn't mean you stop improving and continuing to step it up.

I was talking to Vidra on AIM and he linked me to this video of some random white guy playing guitar. He's actually pretty ******* good.

And I found this link in Zilea's AIM comment. Fun facts about Zilea: he's made the dean's list several times before graduating college with a degree in poli sci and he reads The Huffington Post as his only news source.

More Gold Edition News

no.spam@gameriot.com (wesker burkin) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:53:40 -0500

The Story for the first episode is as follows:

"Spencer, the evil mastermind and co-founder of Umbrella Corporation, has been concealing a new evil deep within the basement of his mansion," says Capcom. "Chris and Jill discover this grotesque evil standing in their way as the two enter deeper into the catacombs beneath the mansion."

As for the Mercenaries Reunion mode, that has players using the new playable characters and new weapon load-outs as they aim to shoot down as many enemies as they can within a limited time, same old mercs just new characters but does the Reunion title hint at who the characters could be?

A boxed copy of the game with all DLC included, Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition, will be released on March 12 (PS3 with all content on disc, Xbox 360 with a download code).

The full release schedule follows:

Xbox 360
Lost in Nightmares: 17 February
Costume Pack 1: 17 February
Episode 2 (title TBA): 3 March
Costume Pack 2: 3 March

PS3
Lost in Nightmares: 18 February
Costume Pack 1: 18 February
Episode 2 (title TBA): 4 March
Costume Pack 2: 4 March

(all Dates for US)

info taken from:www.computerandvideogames.com

Valve FPS Flow Chart

no.spam@gameriot.com (Sol Invictus) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:40:12 -0500

A friend of mine, nfreader, has come up with an astonishingly neat flowchart of Valve’s first person shooters, dating back from the original Half-Life to their latest and greatest game, Left 4 Dead 2. Check it out! (Be sure to click it for the full size image)

Thanks Nick!

Epic Drop 11/19/09: 10-year-old girl tased, Movie popcorn rules, Aussies know wrestling? Grossmans & Cutler, The Road director

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:35:15 -0500

Another bonus Megan Fox day? Yes, we are that lucky. Megan Fox's crotch is contained inside, spread eagle. If that isn't reason enough for you guys, and some girls, to stop in I don't know what is. +1 for multiple crotch shots?

Leading off tonight with the story of a 10-year-old girl getting tased. You guys say I am so anti-taser, which I am at times, but I challenge you to read this story and find any justification for this happening. Her mom should face punishment for "authorizing it" and any cop that needs and uses a taser to subdue a 10-year old needs to find a new job. The mayor of their town wants the FBI and state police to look in to this incident so that is one plus.

Our friends down under seemingly still buy in to professional wrestling. Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair "got in to it" at a press conference and the Aussies report it like its fact and some sort of brawl between Ron Artest and Allen Iverson at a post-game press conference. You can watch it all you want, I don't mind, but can't we call come to the consensus by now that 99.5% of it all is staged? Read the comments as some of them are nearly priceless.

Movie popcorn is amazing. Deny it all you want but sitting down with a bag-of-crap-that-isn't-good-for-you is half the fun of going to the theater along with being blown away by sound and picture quality you can't get in your own home. Apparently however movie popcorn is bad for you, like all awesome things in life, so you shouldn't eat a lot of it. Read up at MSNBC just how bad it is then when you giggle with glee going to see New Moon this weekend you can sneak in tofu or some ****.

Does Megan think she is some sort of gymnast? You know what, I don't care, I just approve. More at Egotastic and these were the outtakes...

How bad is it that Jay Cutler of the Chicago Bears has Rex Grossman's dad feeling bad for him? Things can only go up from here right? I am not ready to call for the death of the Culter experiment but the organization has to realize that changes need to be made and a great arm isn't going to make a team. Yes I expected them to contend for the North this season but injuries on defense up the wazoo and a non-existent running game have not helped Cutler's cause. Anyone seen the missing persons milk carton with Matt Forte on the back? I hear its a collector's item.

The Road director John Hillcoat sat down with Comingsoon.net to talk about his adaption of the much-loved book. They discuss his work with Cormac McCarthy, the books writer, in post-production to help the movie come to life and the differences between the two mediums. They talk about Viggo, shooting locations, etc. Check it out and get ready for The Road November 25th when kicks New Moon in the werewolf testicles.

The FCC has outlined plans for its larger role within the world of U.S. broadband. You guys know I am weary of government intervention in such a market but they have trampled over internet access and broadband access for years at both the Federal (USF), State and local level (exclusive contracts, denying competition) so it seems they may be needed to help balance things back out. The good news is they may be on top of the issues that soon may face cell phone wireless access that soon may dominate the airwaves.

Vir sent this to me late last night and while it has gone viral on the web already I figured I would post it here in case Zilea is looking for that someone special!

And in case you already saw that one here is an awesome boxing K.O.:

Dragon Age: Origins Announces Return to Ostagar DLC

no.spam@gameriot.com (thePinkBurns) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:24:57 -0500

Update: Return to Ostagar now appears on the English addon site, although with a less than spectacular description (yes, the Engrish was preferable!)

Your memories of the battle of Ostagar will haunt you for years to come. It laid waste to your order and claimed the lives of many great men and women, including the brash young King Cailan and your mentor, Duncan.
Now, there are rumors that a fellow survivor of the battle has escaped from captivity and is seeking the Grey Wardens' help. The time has come for the Grey Wardens to make their return to Ostagar and exact their revenge upon the darkspawn.
A return to the battlefields of Ostagar, now thick with darkspawn encamped amidst the snow
An opportunity to reclaim the lost arms and armor of a king
A second chance to add Dog to your party

At only $5 it seems like the trend of 1 hour of gameplay with a new sword and armour set will continue. Is that bad? No. But I certainly would prefer them to concentrate on bigger expansions!

Original Post:

"Evil" Chris Priestly teased yesterday on the official forums for Dragon Age: Origins that "If I were a Dragon Age fan, I'd be visiting the site tomorrow for something new and cool".

As it turns out the Evil one was correct (who wudda thunk it?) as the Czech version of the Dragon Age official site leads with the news article: Navrat Do Ostagaru.

Spotted by eagle-eyed (and presumably Czech) official forum user Netmars , and quickly (machine) translated by numerous forum members, the Czech site post roughly reads as (with the important bits highlighted, pricing at the bottom):

Studio BioWare ™ today announced the release of downloadable content (DLC), on return to Ostagaru for game Dragon Age ™: Sources in versions for video game and entertainment system, Xbox 360 ™, a computer entertainment system, PLAYSTATION ™ 3 and PC. DLC will be available before Christmas this year, both the European and North American market. In Returning to execute Ostagaru retaliates players act and make the long trip back to Ostagaru, where they will search for powerful weapons and armor king Cailana. Ostagar is a place that has witnessed the darkest episodes in the history of Gray guards and players' task is now to regain lost honor and reveal the secrets of the fallen king Fereldenu.

"The phenomenal start selling Dragon Age: Sources're very proud and we are now the honor to inform all fans of the game that they soon will be able to download new game content," said Ray Muzyka, BioWare co-founder and general manager of EA titles for the group RPG MMO. "Back in the DLC package Ostagaru is a fine example of the relentless efforts of studio BioWare players constantly provide new and fresh experiences that enrich the comprehensive and exceptionally high and positively evaluated the story."

Return to Ostagaru is another thread in the BioWare studio dense web of story Dragon Age: Sources. Players take it issued the new expedition, which lead back to the fateful battle in Ostagaru, where they were guardians of Gray almost one killed. Here reveal top secret background of political intentions of the king and Cailana penetrate behind enemy lines to have visited the place, which many thought ended in the dustbin of history.

Return to Ostagaru will be available at a price 135, - CZK PlayStation ™ Store, 400 points BioWare on PC and 400 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360 DLC will be released before Christmas this year in versions for Xbox 360 and PlayStation ™ 3 and PC platform. Degree Dragon Age: Sources has a 18 + PEGI rating.

For more information about Dragon Age: Sources visit www.dragonage.com.

PTR Testing Day 3: Rotface & The Blood Princes; New imbalanced Legendary; ICC raiding system

no.spam@gameriot.com (Nomennescio) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:56:54 -0500

Good evening everyone and welcome to yet another day of Icecrown Citadel PTR testing.
Unfortunately, due to having volleyball practise, I was 15 minutes late for my own raid, and thus unable to set up a proper blog for yesterday, but ill give you a quick rundown on what happened.

Lord Marrowgar

At 19:45 we finally started clearing trash, things weren't looking to good, since we just got banned from the Vent server we were using (still looking for replacement and we were 15 minutes late.

Trash went more or less perfectly but having a group of 5 uncontrollable mobs spawn 2 very hard hitting elites is slightly overdone for trash, so we wiped a couple of times, but really nothing noteworthy about the trash.

As I said on my previous blog, Lord Marrowgar is really a pushover, and so we one-shotted him with only 2 deaths.

The few things I can say about it is that it mostly requires luck, rapid switches and good healers.

He has 3 important abilitys:

Bonestorm: This ability works really comparable to bladestorm it lasts for ~6 seconds and he spins around the entire room hitting everything for ~5k/tick, no biggie but if you are to bunched up on eachother it can cause some strain on your healers.
Impale: This is very comparable to the mechanics of High Warlord Najentus in the way that it impales someone with a spine, and the rest of the raid has to nuke this spine. If this doesn't happen quickly the target can and will die, especially if he has a doomfire on his ass aswell.
Doomfire: This is very comparable to the mechanics of Archmonde in Mt Hyjal: it is semi-intellegent (which means it follows people around but switches regularily) but unlike the archimonde doomfires, it doesn't hurt that much: it ticks for aprox ~5k/sec.

The only way that you can actually die is if your tanks arn't near him quick enough after his bonestorm ends, since he also has the ability to split his normal hits on the two targets closest/highest on threath. If one of those targets is a clothie, it means hes gonna die, which is what happened to us, twice.

                                                   Gunship Battle

The second event of yesterday night was the gunship battle, which your raid, Saurfang and a couple of npc's, fighting an entire boat of alliance soldiers.
The objective is to beat their boat up so badly that they flee and you can continue progressing to the upper spires.

For this fight you have to devide your raid in two halves, group 1 will consist of 3 ranged, 1 tank and 1 healer and stays on our ship, to fight off boarders and shoot their gunners.
Two players from group 1 will also man the guns and shoot them when they become avaible.
Group 2 will consist of 2 melee, 2 healers and a tank and will teleport to their ship using rocket packs, take out the casters freezing our guns, and then teleport back quick enough so that muradins buff (he gets +5% damage for every hit he lands) doesn't stack up to high and oneshots the tank.
This buff will wear off in aprox 15 seconds, allowing your group to go kill the sorcerers again.
I am not sure what triggers the sorcerors to spawn, either its at 75/50/25% or just at timed intervals.
For now the Gunship Battle is for me the best fight in the Icecrown Citadel so far, in the end we got the enemy boat to 14% before the testing ended.

                                        Shadowmourne, the new Legendary

Today blizzard released the stats from the new legendary: Shadowmourne and from what I can see, its overpowered like hell.
Compared to a random legendary looted from ICC25, which will most likely have the same dps as the new wrathfull weapons, this is a 50!!! dps increase.
Not only that, but the weapon hosts 3 red sockets, and the socket bonus is +str, aswell as the weapon having a nice bit of arp and critical strike rating.

Having to fight a double healer warrior team in 3v3 with a warrior who has this baby will be difficult as hell and as far as I can see, we are basicly back to the TBC era, where having Warglaives meant you went from a 2000 rogue to a 2400 rogue.

I am currently not sure wether the proc will work in arena or not, the old proc (8k damage after 10 soul fragments were captured) was confirmed not to work on players, but this proc is only 2k, so I personally think it will be avaible in arenas.
I currently donot know how often you can proc this weapon, but if it procs often, and the +40 str proc stacks, were going to have to go pve again in order to be competitive for rank1.

                                        Blizzards new PvE Progression Path

Blizzard has just released word of their new progression pve path in ICC:

As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

This basicly means the following:

Sunwell-esque gating progress, every once in a while a new wing of the instance will be opened, this can take as long as blizzard feels comfortable with.
Togc-esque attempt system, you only have 5 wipes to kill the last boss of each wing (Prof Putricide, Blood Queen and Syndrygosa), only, after each passing week, you will have another 5 tries to do it, so that there is gradual progression on the boss kills. There will, however, be no achievement for completing ICC while having all your tries still left, or without anyone dying, like there is in totgc.
And now the most important one: graduel progression with a buff which increases in strength each week, which makes sure that blizzard doesn't have to nerf the bosses overtime to let the worse players experience them aswell. I personally think this is one of the best things they could ever have done to their pve game, as it really allows graduel progression for both the casual and the hardcore guilds. Ofcourse, there is also a way to turn this buff off, which will probably rewards you with an achievement if you manage to complete the instance in this way.

Rotface & The Blood Princes

Now onto the content of tonights PTR raid.
We are going to test Rotface and The Blood princes again, both encounters have already been tested atleast once (Princes) or even 3 times (Rotface), so there isn't much I can say about the encounter really.
Here are the models of the bosses, they might be placeholders but I personally doubt that, thanks to mmo-champion for making them.

A full list of their abilitys can be found here and here.

As usual, my xfire stream is http://www.xfire.com/live_video/nomennescios/

The Liveblog

19:06 Invites should have started by now, but Blizzard just had to choose this moment to reboot their servers, so I cannot get online, im guessing the show will start soon.

19:10 Remulos (the french server) just came online, and the rest will soon follow.

19:16 Remulos just went down and Brill, the server were on, completely disapeared from the server list

19:43 Just wtf is blizzard thinking their doing with those damned servers, wtb everything up already

19:45 Servers finally comming online, however I still cannot log onto my own account for some reason, so I logged onto a friends priest and started the invites, stream is up now.

19:54 It turns out only people who actually had a battlenet account before the patch can login

20:14 Icecrown Citadel isn't currently open, even though the entrance is crowded as hell, a guildie of mine just spoke to Boubouille (the main mod of mmo-champ) over IRC and he says hes currently trying to find out what happens aswell.
Hopefully the raiding won't be cancelled.

20:22 Finally, the instance opens, time to get rocking naow

20:45 Okay turned out I was wrong, some blizzard guy said they would be opening up....around 20 minutes ago..... blizzard service at its best guys

20:57 The instance opened up 10 mins ago but still we havn't been able to clear anything significant, people are dcing/slacking bigtime and someone just pulled the valkyrs

21:25 We are now nearly at the boss, just have to dispatch the two big gluthlike dogs

21:33 we just wiped twice on the gluthlike dogs, because appearently they seem to pull eachother even if they arn't remotely close

22:04 Tonights raid is going really ****ty, we just had our first wipe in the Blood Quarter because of tank failure, I mean how fkin hard can it be to keep decent agro as a warrior?