Some people complain, some people bellyache. Few, very few try to offer analyses and insights in the hope that a satisfactory answer may be found.

This is what World of Warcraft forum member Tulkaz did in response to complaints about Shamans. No invective, no vitriol: his "The Plight of the Shaman Class V2.0" offers an insightful perspective into what it feels like to play as the Shaman as he is now: "underpar and generally unwanted."

As a very longish post and quite detailed in its analysis, it would be far better to refer you to the Read link to take it all in full. As such, we can only offer a short overview of the arguments. Tulkaz goes as far as to detail specs and points in the Enhancement, Restoration, and Elemental specializations of the Shaman. As he observes,

However as the game developed the shaman were torn in three different directions as the devs saw it necessary to make them focus on being just one thing at a time, healer, damage caster, or meleer. But by doing this they have made a broken class, sure, at each particular role the shaman class is more effective than it was before, but at the same time they have to almost give up the other two roles.

And by being constructive and insightful, rather than choose the path of the troll or the griefer, he did get Tseric's attention, who will pass these comments along to Blizzard. Whether it will make a dent is another matter entirely, but at least the case has been made, right?

 

Don't say no one warned you. Eyonix dropped by the World of Warcraft forums to inform everyone that there will be rolling restarts for all realms on April 24, 5:00am PDR - except for a select number of realms which will require a two-hour maintenance break. These realms are as follows:

• Area 52
• Auchindoun
• Azuremyst
• Blade's Edge
• Blood Furnace
• Coilfang
• Exodar
• Shattered Halls
• Terokkar
• The Scryers
• The Underbog
• Velen
• Zangarmarsh

Like we said: don't say no one warned you.

This is an old topic from back last year, thanks to patch 1.12.1, but it seems that some players still manage to be surprised. A player posted the question to the Blues over at the World of Warcraft forums: "I don't understand the theory. twice upon abandoning a quest I lost the items I collected for the quest. Why? "

Answer, according to Nethaera: it (presumably) simplifies storage management for players and eliminates clutter by dropping all items from quests which are abandoned, on the presumption that players who've abandoned said quests are no longer interested in the loot that results from said quest.

(Another offered opinion, based on a Tseric post, was that this feature was added in response to players trying to stockpile XP prior to The Burning Crusade release. The rest of the article proceeds from Nethaera's answer, and not this presumption, but we felt it had to be added as a nota bene, just in case. A few posters in the thread are crying over Nethaera neglecting to mention this.)

Ah, but that logic Nethaera offers runs counter to one of the most iconic concepts of the gaming universe: the RESET button. Some - well, MOST players actually do the erase-rewind because they botched and would like a second crack at the challenge. In the case of our hapless player who found his pockets empty after abandoning a quest, he did so because he wanted to regain a ray gun whose timer had run out.

These kinds of players kind of resent, or at least deplore, that they can't keep the items they want to keep after abandoning a quest - again, on the basis of erase-rewind. Others find the "abandon = clear inventory" feature useful because, well, they don't like to be bothered by the details of going through the backpack for litter.

There's a piece in World of Warcraft @ Curse that talks of the plight of a few women in World of Warcraft who had to suffer what the poster described as sexual harassment, although under the law would probably count as stalking (albeit online), but still...

There's a Level 70 Night Elf Rogue who's literally being quite the bugger to his female guildmates, from spamming them with lewd suggestions to trying to get their 411 (that's names, digits, home address preferable) in RL. In-guild disciplinary action didn't help: said Rogue continues his roguish ways in his new guild. Worse yet, if the poster's information is correct, he simply puts protesters on his ignore list.

Now yours truly is a guy, but even then, eww. I wouldn't want to imagine the state of his gaming equipment with that mentality. If this story is true, either this Rogue is completely desperate, a total horndog, undoubtedly a perv, or born with a raging hormonal defect or something.

Yeah, the cynical response to this would be to say "So what? Just get out of the guild, ignore the guy, and get back to the game, **** it." Yeah, yeah, say that to quite a good portion of the WoW population. More to the point, it's that kind of attitude that's lamentable. Blizzard does have a position on sexual innuendo and behavior in-game.

Finally, as VGCats' Aeris so eloquently put it, if MMORPGs are all about the social interaction, damn it, we ought to point out that society, being people mingling with each other, does have minimum expectations for conduct. For crying out loud, there IS a proper way to pick women up at bars - and maybe even actually score a long-term fulfilling commitment out of it. Yeah, there's a tendency to crack jokes and all, but... we stop where it hurts.

So if this story is true, and if that Level 70 Rogue is reading this... perhaps you might like to redirect your attentions elsewhere instead.

Feel like your old haunt is getting a little too crowded for your tastes? Does it seem like even fellow race members are kicking each others' behinds for the pettiest of grievances? Fancy starting anew and afresh elsewhere in World of Warcraft, from a back-to-basics character to starting a new guild?

Well, the Blizzard Minister for Migration, Drysc (okay, he's not minister of anything along those lines, to be honest), would like to submit these realms for your consideration. As he says, these realms are (a) relatively new, (b) in need of a population boost, and (c) offer an opportunity to start anew - from new characters to new guilds to new friends.

• Velen
• Terokkar
• Rivendare
• Shu'halo
• The Underbog

He does not mention if these come with 2-bed, 2-bath cottages. You might want an actual real estate agent for that.

Okay, this might help soothe the sting of the bear-nerfing. Over at that mega-realm known as teh intarwebs is this highly thorough mega-guide for Bear-form tanking gear. And by thorough we mean THOROUGH. We're talking about a massive mall-of-(insert country name here) full of weapons and armor, levels, stats, where they can be found - it's a friggin' database for bears on the warpath.

And Bears aren't the only one rolling in joy with this database. Cat-form druids, too, get their own database for sustained and max-burst DPS stats. Whoever created this list (we've tried looking for your name all over your database site, but it's not there), bears and cats everywhere howl the night awake in gratitude. Information, after all, is power, readily available one Read link away.

No, that bear tank-top is not one of the suggested equipment for Bear tanking.

Really, what's with the human fascination to cut kill notches into their weapons... The video you are about to see was taken by a member of the Last Resort, a Horde guild in the Kazzak (EU) realm, recently deep-sixing The Lurker Below back to the briny deep (one of many such kill videos they've made and recorded, those busy little hunters hunting wabbits).

Checking WoWWiki, Last Resort is among the first five guilds to have offed this... whatever it is (the first kill, worldwide, going to Death & Taxes back in the 12th of this month). And the loot ain't half-bad for a day's work, either.

And finally, with a name like Last Resort, you'd think they'd use a Papa Roach song as the background music for this video. Talk about getting away with murder.

Blizzard still has Patch 2.1.0 on a TBA (to be announced) holding pattern. On the other hand, some people can't help but speculate on what changes will come to World of Warcraft with that patch. For example: MMO-Champion.com's Boubouille, who's posted either what looks like leaked "2.1.0 Patch notes," or created one of his own as a speculative representation, based on what scraps of info he could glean from blue posts.

Really, all IS speculation until Blizzard decides to pull 2.1.0 from the holding pattern. But his guess is that in 2.1.0,

• The Black Temple will open up;
• A Battleground matching system will be implemented
• And a bunch - a big bunch of tweaks and nerfs to classes, skills, and bugs and other concerns - better left to a Read link.

This is more like taking a shotgun to the speculation. It is very likely that the tweaks he predicts will be in 2.1.0, but even then, even if it is gleaned from blue posts, Boubouille himself warns that not everything can be expected to come in 2.1.0. Better to wait for the official word from Blizzard, after all.

Still, if you enjoy speculating, what do you think will make it into 2.1.0?

As this appears on the European World of Warcraft forums, we can presume that something is afoot in European servers for WoW. Blizzard poster Aeus reports that, bad news, Kor'Gall keeps going down. Blizzard thought they were able to correct the situation after the first glitch report, but it seems that there's still a problem.

According to Aeus, as of now, Kor'Gall is back up, but it's been experiencing intermittent spikes. Hmm... across the water, US players have had realms go down on them, too... And it is time for a little housecleaning, it seems. I wonder...

 

That's what the official World of Warcraft is for. Some players who have toured the expanse of Old Hillsbrad were saddened to note that it was... well, expansive except for content. A thread was born, asking the Blues if they can tell the Blizzard devs: we want more quests in Old Hillsbrad.

And Tigole responds: "We'd love to add more quests to this zone. Hopefully, time will permit in the future. We have some pretty cool ideas for Caverns of Time."

There you have it. Give them a bit of time, there may be something new to do in Old Hillsbrad, aside from counting rocks and bones.