If your character uses a lot of skills or spells in World of Warcraft, you can expect that when you hit level 70 the screen will be cluttered with many buttons. The question is now posed: How does one optimize the hot keys to ensure minimum clutter on the screen as one plays the game?

A poster named Illai on the WoW Europe forums dished out some very good tips to address this. According to Illai, most of the healing spells were keybound to the numpad while deciding between various types of spells were handled though modifier keys (*###/control/alt). You could also follow Blizzard Poster/ Forum Moderator Aeus suggestion of using qUserKey. It's a mod which lets players bind hotkeys to spells and macros without the need to have them on a bar.

Another method you can try is to trim down the skills you've been using. Just select the most efficient ones that are used in special cases and assign a button to it. Be sure to keybind the more common skills you use to ensure that they will always easily accessible. If any of our readers have any tips on button optimization, feel free to share them with the rest of the WoW community by posting it below.

 

There's a little oddity regarding naming characters in World of Warcraft. If you make a character name with a capital letter in the middle, it will automatically be converted to smaller case. This was brought up in the forums and the thread has created quite a stir.

Now if you take the time to check out the manual, you will find that some pictures show characters with letters in the middle of their names capitalized. So some players pointed this out, at which point Blizzard Poster/Forum Moderator Aeus gave his theories on the reason for this implementation in a post.

I'm guessing it's easier to change one line of code that restricts the use, after the manual is already printed, than to re print the entire batch of manuals. And I'm guessing no one noticed in the re-printing for T.B.C. ...or no one thought it would be of such importance that it should be a vital change.

I don't know about most of you, but I'd have to agree with the other players regarding not allowing capitalized letters in the middle of the name. We don't need multiple permutations of popular names spread out among characters. After all, can you imagine running an instance with four characters named Legolas, just with different letters capitalized? That would be chaos.

 

Heads up, PTR fans! You may want to start playing your mains later today because there's going to be some downtime later today to introduce an internal patch to the public test realms.

Blizzard poster Aeus informed the public of the maintenance time, saying:

We will be performing a maintenance on the Public Test Realms on Wednesday, July 18th, in order to apply an internal patch. This is not a client patch, so players will not be required to update anything on their end.

We expect this maintenance to start at 18:00 CEST and last for two hours, ending at approximately 20:00 CEST. During this time it will not be possible to log in to the PTRs.

Folks who want to further explore what else the PTRs have to offer will have to wait a while, it seems. Ah well, it gives you more time to work on earning that Netherdrake, right?

 

It has been reported that some servers in World of Warcraft have been suffering from "performance issues." The servers that were affected included Auchindoun, Ghostlands, Hellfire, Karazhan, Nagrand, Shattered Halls, Sporeggar, and The Sha'tar.

Blizzard Poster/ Forum Moderator Aeus quickly addressed this problem on the WoW Europe Forums saying that they have "pinpointed the cause and in the next couple of hours we’ll be working on resolving the issue in the background." It was also great that the Blizzard team who handled this problem was very efficient in getting everything normalized on the estimated time that Aeus gave.

Of course, it's natural that some players were asking for one day free credit, such as the one given to the players on the servers which went down some time ago. We'll see how this will shape up.

Some players will undoubtedly have noticed that there was extended maintenance done last June 27 in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. This maintenance caused eight hours of downtime for the servers Alonsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall, and Lightbringer.

Because of this, Blizzard poster/ Forum Moderator Aeus announced on the Europe WoW forums that all players with an active character on any of those servers will be granted one day of game time credit.

This was met with a mixed reaction from the players. Some have applauded this move, while others have questioned it asking that the downtime from a month ago be refunded as well.

A few players have given word that they haven't seen the additional free day on their accounts yet. If this is the case, it might be wise to contact Blizzard regarding it. So players from the aforementioned servers have gotten a free day of gaming, while it may not seem like much, it all adds up if Blizzard keeps implementing this for every unscheduled downtime.

A video game's official community site or online forum is where fans go and discuss their favorite title. It is in these places where players come to get the latest news, hear the latest updates, and even get some tips.

With that said, please be informed that there will be significant changes to the official World of Warcraft official community site in Europe. Blizzard forum moderator Aeus posted the following,

Posting spoilers is one of the worst ways to troll; not to mention the amount of players whose enjoyment and anticipation can potentially be utterly ruined. Anyone posting a spoiler, whether it's confirmed or not, will receive a permanent ban.

Take note that this does not only concern spoilers for WoW itself. Though it might sound weird and unrelated, several user accounts have already been banned for posting spoilers to the upcoming Harry Potter finale Deathly Hallows.

Is evocation gimped, or are you gimping yourself out of a good evocation spell? That's the question that comes to mind when we noticed this new thread spawning over on the European World of Warcraft boards.

The question: Is evocation working as intended? The answer, according to Blizzard CM Aeus, is yes, noting that the efficacy of mage evocation is dependent on the individual amount of spirit a person has invested in his gear. Aeus writes,

We feel evocate is working as it is intended: it’s simply highly dependent on how much spirit the mage has.

Unfortunately, many mages seem not to like spirit that much and would rather spend their gem slots and enchants on other stats. This is fine, everyone has the freedom to choose what stats they want to focus on.

Whereas in the past we forced a lot of spirit onto the mage's tier sets so that they would have good mana regen, to leave more room for flexibility and choice we have replaced a lot of that spirit with gem slots in recent gear.

A good number of folks over on the thread have interesting comments, either appreciating the explanation or deriding it for not addressing the issue of evocation as broken by a fault of game mechanics. While it doesn't change the nature of evocate, it does pose an important question: Do you think evocate's effectiveness as a matter of choice is sound, in terms of practical gameplay?

 

You called, and luckily, Big Blue might listen. World of Warcraft Europe's paladins have been hoping that auras could be re-examined for more use in combat. Cool downs that encompass all abilities and not just the auras and specialized auras that resist varied forms of attack and damage are just some of the ideas passed on by Langlam of The Venture Co.

And Blizzard's reply was a 180 turn from the typical "it doesn't need changing now." True to what they said before, they will be checking the suggestions made at the WoW Forums and see if it clicks with the developers' goals. Aeus said, "Some interesting ideas in here. I might bring up one or two of them and see what the feedback is. But keep in mind, feedback to players would most likely just be in a future patch note."

Of course, many are currently skeptical of the CM's efforts of bringing their ideas to the attention of the developers. But if there's a chance of your ideas reaching the developers, isn't that a blessing more than none at all?

There was a time, long ago, when mana gems could make or break a prolonged fight. Nowadays, the efficacy of mana gems is negligible, especially since the level cap has been raised and no changes have been made to keep mana gems competitively useful in-game.

This is the observation of many mages, and one which Hideous of Shadowsong asks an important question about. Are there any plans to give mages better mana gems, or will there be changes to mana gems to make them more useful in the future?

Currently, no answers have been given about any upgrades to mana gems, though Blizzard poster Aeus did post a (rather short) comment on the thread, noting that better mana gems were needed.

While the mage community is currently wondering about whether or not this spell will get improvements in the future, we do have to wonder. Do you guys think mana gems are currently gimped? More importantly, what utility spells in your classes could use some buffing in the near future?

For those players who've been waiting for their lost armored nether drakes, here's some good news for you. Blizzard poster Aeus gave an update over at the World of Warcraft Europe Forums and it's good news indeed.

The problem with the missing Armored Nether Drakes and title mix-up will get fixed tomorrow at 5:00 CEST. According to Aeus, this is what will happen: "As a result of this update, we will first remove all Armoured Nether Drake mounts, after which we will resend Armoured Nether Drake mounts to only those players who should have received them."

The blue poster also apologized to the players for the confusion and assured them that the titles are getting fixed as well. Anyway, better ready that epic riding skill.