(SPOILER NOTE FROM THROGG -- THIS ARTICLE MIGHT HAVE HABERDASHERY BASED SPOILERS ABOUT CATACLYSM.)

"Oh," Lolegolas said, tossing a cascade of blonde ribbons over his shoulder like a wheat fountain. "Throgg, I must say. I must take it all back. That haberdasher you've seen has performed a miracle for you."

Throgg blinked. "Not Christmas, little belfling. I do not have her Dasher."

Lolegolas held perfectly still, blinking at the orc with confused eyes. "Have her Dash ... oh! Oh, no! I meant haberdasher. The hatter you must have visited. For the hat you are wearing is quite marvelous!"

"You really like it? It is Lord Walden's Top Hat. It does nothing for me," Throgg said in slow, careful words. He nudged the front of the hat up slightly, letting his unibrow shine in the sunlight.

"I must disagree, fair Throgg," Lolegolas said, waving away the comment with his perfectly manicured fingers. "It does wonders for the shape of your skull. It's gone from being quite block-shaped to something more like a rectangle. Your entire face is far more geometrically sound now."

"No," Throgg said. "I mean, it has no stats on it. It does nothing. But it sure looks nice."

"Well, then, Throgg," Lolegolas said. "Why are you wearing it?"

The orc smiled as he slid a monocle onto his nose. "Take up banking."

Name Lord Walden's Top Hat
Damage Immense to the hearts and romances of those around you
How to get it It's a quest item in Cataclysm. You must handle the Betrayal at Tempest's Reach.
How to get rid of it You sell it to some soulless vendor for 1 copper.

Gallery: Phat Loot Phriday: Cataclysm

Filed under: Phat Loot Phriday

Phat Loot Phriday: Lord Walden's Top Hat originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zach sees everything through the PvP perspective of The Art of War(craft), including homemade cookies baked by his supremely awesome and sexy baker wife. He sees the brownies as opponents that need to be devoured in a methodical, strategic and soul-crushing manner. He advises everyone to look at all things (especially food) as adversaries that must be defeated and guarantees that success in life will follow. Probably.

Let's face it. Right now, if you're a regular reader of WoW.com, we're in some sort of holding pattern and the biggest thing that interests us about the game is what's going on in the Cataclysm beta. It's still far too early to settle on any talent builds, but who can resist playing with those talent calculators, right? Certainly not me. The beta changes so rapidly, though, that it would be foolish to write anything without the proper caveat that the final product is likely going to be much different.

One thing that's likely to stay the same throughout beta, however, is the ravaged landscape of Azeroth. This should create some interesting possibilities for world PvP. The biggest change is that the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will become flyable. It will become harder and far more dangerous to level as players must now not only watch their literal backs but also look skyward for potential griefers. On PvP servers, this makes it a far more dangerous and exciting world.

Continue reading The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy.

Good morning and welcome to this week's column, an overview of how the talent specialization changes affect leveling a warrior in the Cataclysm beta. Before I started this project, I made sure to keep to the following self-imposed rules.

1. No heirlooms. This is 100 percent quest rewards and random drops. (Yes, the Wyrmslayer Spaulders dropped randomly for me while questing in Felwood.) I didn't run any instances because after level 30 or so it got really hard to find an instance group at the levels I was at, but that wasn't a hard-and-fast rule.
2. Try and exhaust a zone before moving on. This means doing as many quests as I can, no skipping around, and experiencing as much of the new versions of old zones as possible. Turns out you can actually do fairly well that way. There are a lot of quests out there now.
3. Switch talent specialization every four or five levels. There was no real rhyme or reason to this, I just wanted to see how talent specs felt at different levels. Blood Craze is very strong now. Combined with Bloodthirst and the heal from Victory Rush, a fury warrior can easily take on groups without falling over dead or running away. The old warrior strategy of "kill them before they kill you" is actually somewhat viable now.

So let's discuss the experiment. What did I find were the pros and cons of the new system? What's good for warriors and what's bad?

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week, are taking a look at those two abilities that some druid seems to have forgotten. What sad, sad times these are.

Do you like that screenshot? That would be what happens when you cross a bugged version of Lunar Justice -- I don't even have the talent, I never had the talent -- with a large AoE group that swarms around you. You can hide entire Ancients in that thing; seriously, you can.

I have something that I must confess to all of you today; I've been a bit remiss in the work that I've done with all of the Cataclysm information that's going around right now. I've spent a lot of time focusing on topics such as Eclipse, mana regeneration and Moonkin Form -- all of which are very important -- yet I have completely failed to take into account the whole picture. How Wrath scales, the way in which Eclipse is influenced by RNG, how useful Moonkin Form may or may not be to a player -- these are all important, but so too is the value of our entire spell arsenal. To that end, I'd like to take you back into the downward spiral that is my life as a beta addict as we take a not so quick gander at how our lovable Moonfire and Insect Swarm are holding up their end of the bargain thus far in the next expansion.

Before that, let me say that I haven't done any testing of the new instances as of yet, mostly because I'm scared to -- very, very scared to -- so everything I've been doing is limited to questing and work on target dummies. These are nice tools, but they aren't quite the same as seeing how everything works out within a boss setting. Movement and other caveats to every boss encounter can heavily sway the importance of any single ability at the drop of a hat, so I am saddened that I haven't been able to actually get in and try my hand at any real encounter. There's a reason for it, though. Like I said, I'm scared; I'm scared because tank threat is really, really, really, really, really screwed up right now, and I have this thing against seeing my face splat against the ground, eating dirt. I cheat on my balance druid with a protection paladin from time to time, and running anything makes me want to cry at the moment. Until that's fixed ... you probably won't see me running much of anything.

Anyway, back on point of DoTs -- let's get right into it, shall we?

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Balance DoTs in Cataclysm

Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Shifting Perspectives: Balance DoTs in Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NSFW warning: Video may be slightly NSFW (bikinis and shirtless guys).
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

Does Right Said Fred hold the answer to the latest WoW drama? This week, the Drama Mamas help a frustrated player who can't figure out why so many of her groupmates seem to feel they're simply too sexy for their groups.

To my dearest Drama Mamas,

In a random heroic I did earlier, I kept getting prompted to kick members of my party. I saw nothing wrong with the way these players were performing, and I always voted against it. After it happened again, I asked my party why there were so many random kick attempts. I was told by a hunter in my party that the tank, who was in a guild with the hunter, was being an ass and that it was funny, after which the tank sent a smiley face in party chat. I did not say anything further and continued healing, only to be kicked a minute later. Oh, did I mention we were in the middle of Falric?

Was I right to question why there were so many kick attempts? Is there anything I could have done to avoid this situation? It seems like kick abuse is happening more and more frequently. It is not uncommon for me to be in a party where a tank or DPS will start a vote simply because that player won a piece of gear they wanted; I have even been in groups where a member has started a vote to kick a player who is pumping out higher DPS.

Continue reading Drama Mamas: Too sexy for your group

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas

Drama Mamas: Too sexy for your group originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Choose the adventures of the WoW.com staff as we level our characters in <It came from the Blog> on Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H).

Are there goblin hunters who didn't name their crab pets Ghostcrawler? It seems to me that it should be the default name. It would save time. First schedule, then polls:

• Fox Van Allen as Foxlight, the level 22 blood elf paladin: Friday, 8 p.m. EDT
• Michael Sacco as Sahko, the orc warlock; Christian Belt, as Selfloathius, the level 16 blood elf warlock; Elizabeth Harper as Faience, the level 24 troll shaman; Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, the level 17 troll mage; Michael Gray as Grayfields, the level 17 tauren hunter; and Gregg Reece as Sandwichdoc, the level 16 troll shaman, will be making appearances as they can.

Some of us will be playing our Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H) characters, but some of us will be letting you choose what we do in the Cataclysm beta. The polls are after the break.

Continue reading Choose My Adventure: To beta or not to beta

Filed under: It Came from the Blog, Choose My Adventure

Choose My Adventure: To beta or not to beta originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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