WoW Rookie: Snag the best tricks with tutorial tips

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW’s newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to’s, visit WoW.com’s WoW Rookie Guide. No matter whether you’re the greenest rookie on the block or well into leveling by now, if you haven’t paid attention to the new, improved tutorial system that was launched with Patch 3.3, you’re missing out! “This is great,” says reader Dysmorphia when news broke about the new system. “I didn’t even realize that you could turn your character with a mouse until around level 60 or so. Look at this sad e-mail I wrote to a more experienced druid when PvP got me down: My enemies literally run in circles around me making it very hard for me to attack. If you can offer any advice, I would be much obliged to you. Now it’s the first thing I tell new players. But having it actually clearly explained in a tutorial will be very helpful.” Sink your teeth into the whole feast’s worth of tips in our tutorial tips gallery, which

WoW Rookie: Gearing up with the LFG feature

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW’s newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to’s, visit WoW.com’s WoW Rookie Guide. Plotting your path from zero to hero? “Last night, I got my alt mage to level 80 (woop) and thought I’d set about doing some heroics to get those ‘phat loots’ and a have a bit of fun,” writes reader Hedwinkle of EU Daggerspine. “However, I was disappointed to see that I couldn’t queue up for any heroics using the new tool, as my gear level wasn’t high enough. I mean, it’s all blue gear from the later instances, so I guess I have two questions … “1. What is the gear level required to allow me to queue up for random heroics using the new tool? “2. What is the best way for me to go about getting my gear level higher? People on my server have very little interest now in finding a group the ‘old-fashioned’ way.” As it turns out, Hedwinkle’s not the only one who’s been puzzling over the

The Colosseum: Patch 3.3 and the Arena

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, Furious, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We’re especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player. There have been no immediate changes to the Arena directly due to patch 3.3. Okay, well, that’s not entirely true, but the changes to the Arena are mostly change by implication. Nonetheless, there’s enough little things that will affect the gladiators that it’s worth spending a little time examining. Probably the biggest change we’ve been hearing about is that you can now pick up Arena points from doing your daily battleground quest. At 25 Arena points per daily, It’s not a huge amount of points. If you’re already a very highly rated arena team, then you’re probably not going to get a large amount of use from an

Encrypted Text: Rogue gear guide for patch 3.3

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about all of the new gear you can find in patch 3.3. Patch 3.3 descended upon us rather quickly, bringing all of the new patch notes to fruition. It even brought extended maintenance and instance server outages in its wake. You can read more of WoW.com’s coverage of 3.3 in our comprehensive guide. I was lucky enough to survive the instability long enough to run the new 5 man’s, and they’re a ton of fun. I’ve talked about the changes that rogues can expect, with Combat seeing a nice boost via the Deadly Poison change, and Mutilate is sitting pretty with Murder and the DP change putting it in sole possession of first place. Hopefully you’ve got a pair of daggers lying around. If you don’t, have no fear! Blizzard has put in a ton of new rogue loot, and really pulled out all of the stops. Read on for a list of all the gear you’ll be able to acquire in these first few weeks of our

Arcane Brilliance: WoW patch 3.3 primer for mages

It’s time again for another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that loves mages and all things magey. Take this picture, for example. That’s a mage right there. If I’m not mistaken, she’s getting ready to do something magey. Like plant a Fireball deep in the fertile soil of a warlock’s grill. Arcane Brilliance loves everything about that. So apparently patch 3.3 could literally drop any moment. I’m not even kidding. It might have happened while I was typing that last sentence. I don’t know. More likely, though, is that it will come (as per the usual deployment-method) during the upcoming Tuesday maintenance. This means we’ve only got a little time left before we can enter Icecrown Citadel and begin the patch-long process of shaking its inhabitants down repeatedly for loot. I, for one, cannot wait to place an Arcane Missile or five directly up Arthas’ frosty tailpipe. But what, exactly, does this patch bring to the mage class? I’m glad you asked. Though this patch is admittedly a bit heavy on the new raid content and light

The OverAchiever: The Keymaster

Hot on the heels of a much larger achievement we’ve recently covered (Twenty-Five Tabards), I’ve decided to do The Keymaster in this article for two reasons: I recently watched Ghostbusters. Do I need another reason? Actually, the other reason is that if you’ve done Twenty-Five Tabards, Keymaster is usually pretty easy because you’ve likely got some Burning Crusade faction rep under your belt. I could tack on a third — I’m constantly surprised at the number of players who aren’t keyed for some of the old-world dungeons, and by “surprised,” possibly I mean “irritated,” because I keep getting pestered to go open doors. Happily, just about all of these keys can be soloed at 80 for most classes, and none of them are particularly time-intensive (with the possible exception of the Scholomance key due to insane travel time) to get. Auchenai Key You’ll need at least Honored reputation with Lower City in order to purchase this from Nakodu, the Lower City quartermaster in (where else?) Lower City, Shattrath. Questing for Lower

The Guild season 3 finale

The Guild has come to the end of season 3, and it’s all come down to this. Codex is facing off what’s left of the Axis of Anarchy, Riley has appeared to ruin Zaboo’s game, and all of the other issues this season come to a head as the showdown reaches its conclusion. And being that this is the season finale, there’s a few surprises in the mix as well, and a shocker of a finish. You can watch the show over on MSN (which is now calling itself Bing), on the Xbox Live and Zune marketplaces, or right after the break below. The gang has also released the final gag reel of the season, with outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage from the last three episodes. Lots of fun stuff in there as well, though definitely be sure to finish the season first — as you might expect, there’s some spoilers. And I’m sure the gag reels, and lots of other special footage, will end up on the eventual DVD release for this season. We’ll let you know about that, and season four, when we hear about it. Long live the Knights of Good!

Around Azeroth: Five years later…

You’ll be hearing a lot about WoW’s five years today. We’ve done some hard work in pulling up some interesting things to show you all, and are going to start giving away some cool stuff too. So for today’s Around Azeroth we wanted to do something a little unique. Instead of your typical awesome screenshot, we went with your untypically awesome alpha shot. Back from when WoW was version 0.01 and stuff like that. In the above screenshot you can see some of the early looking models. I don’t think they look particularly bad. Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly

Around Azeroth: Mr. T and the women

We’ve had quite a few submissions lately showcasing the various uses and abuses of the new Mohawk Grenade. Yeng of <Carpe Imperium> and his friends have all spent extensive time playing with the grenades, but recently, Yeng has decided to stop the jibber-jabber and get serious. Yeng is here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and he’s all out of gum. Although … actually, he’s not. Well, I suppose he can do both at the same time, as long as he doesn’t accidentally choke to death on his Bubblicious. Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen

Dedicated WoW search engine now in beta

This probably isn’t something Google or Bing should worry about, but there’s a new search engine in town. Mrgl-Mrgl, a new search engine dedicated to the World of Warcraft, recently launched and is now in beta. The site, named after the NPC in a murloc suit in Borean Tundra, collates search results based on relevance to WoW. There are five search category tabs: Web, Image, Video, Forums, and Items. Users can type any keyword, not necessarily related to World of Warcraft (apparently subject to abuse, as shown in the most popular keywords), and the search engine delivers results scoured from popular WoW-related sites. A few searches on the site don’t appear to yield better results than, say, Google, which pulls data from more sources including guild websites or player blogs. Mrgl-mrgl results appear to be limited to World of Warcraft news sites, forums, and WoW-tagged videos on YouTube. We’re not quite sure how important it is to have a dedicated WoW search engine in the midst of database sites such as Wowhead, wikis such as WoWwiki, and blue forum trackers, but if it