Minnesota Diplomacy Group

Hey, When I hit 70 2 months ago I had a full set of leather moonkin greens/blues that I had been picking up while leveling. Immediately I went to the lower city vendor in Shatt and bought the blue PVP gear. It costs like 25-50 gold a piece but offers resilience and decent stats for the time being. It should also help to boost up your HP. I also had some honor saved up from leveling so I bought the PVP gladiators staff, the alliance trinket, and some kodohide shoulders. Since then I have been grinding honor for like 2 months, I almost have a full set of kodohide (im at 379 resil). Full kodohide s2 will give you tons of mp5 and something like 800 damage / 1300 healing....

So, yes... I retired Arex my boomkin. I no longer raid due to real life becoming more important. My playtime has gone down a little bit but I've begun to enjoy the game a whole lot more now surprisingly. I find it incredibly interesting that when I first started this game raiding was not my intention and I actually had no clue what raiding was. Well the day I dinged 70 I purchased a set of green spell power leather items so I could and made my way into my first Kara run. Fast forward multiple patches, 3 tiers of raiding, one expansion and 4 more tiers of raiding I've seen quite a bit of the game. I find my...

Dash and Charge share the same cooldown. That's the boar's only "real weakness" -- ok, mostly kidding -- but I'm not kidding that they share same cooldown. Charge is for most cases better than dash. Dash gives him speed longer, but Charge's cooldown is shorter - and charge helps the boar get more hate due to the AP buff on his next attack - and because it (not a real stun - what is it - a one second it can be very useful in pvp vs runners and FCs. If you want to be the "ultimate runner stopper" consider spec'ing beast enough to bet B.S. (bestial swiftness) - pet will be 30 faster all the time - and then can charge on top of that. Not sure this is worth it to most hunters, but it is an option. I'd start Pigs tend to come with Charge and Gore. Always train them Growl (unless your pig is a Pure pvp pet). Your pig can do just fine for the most part w/ Charge, Gore and Growl. Do you train Bite? Well, maybe. Gore is like Claw in that it uses up focus, fast (no cooldown, if I recall). W/ a focus regen'ing talent this problem is mostly mitigated (like the one in the beast tree, or GftThroat in MM). But w/out you might find that Gore is sucking o...

Twice tonight (both times in Shattered Halls) I was accused of using Feign Death too much. Both were by other Hunters. Both other Hunters seemed (imo) to be either functionally clueless or exceptionally selfish in the team play department. Nevertheless, I just want to run a few scenarios by ya'll where I normally FD. 1) Mob(s) on me at melee range with traps on cooldown. Basic self defense...I can't CC or dps if I'm dead, and Deterence can only get me out of so much trouble. Drop threat, get to range and see where the mobs go...if necessary pull them back off of clothies and kite until other options are available. 2) Closing in on tank's threat level. FD to reset threat and resume firing. Pretty straightforward stuff...usually res...

My biggest tip is don't spec Survival if you're only doing at 'charity' to your guild or to get into heroics. Yes SV is trapping on ez-mode (Although a lot of the SV raid specs don't bother with the trap talents) but if you're not able to successfully trap in a heroic as MM, you've not even got a firm grasp on the basics of trapping yet, and changing spec won't help you. Practice will. It sounds cheesy as hell, but 'real' SV hunters see it as a calling and honestly enjoy playing the spec more than any other. Every time I seee a "I'm doing this for my guild" post, I shake my head as all that person will probably achieve is lesser enjoyment of the...

Corrt me if I'm wrong, but the +skill rial --- That should make it e...

Just in case you're not one of the millions of Chinese subscribers to World of Warcraft who already knows this, here's a recap; the game recently changed operators in the PRC, and as a result had been down for weeks. But now it's back! And, as we told you a few weeks back, it's back with a catch: some of the game's content has been edited by the local authorities. But just...

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Nothing puts a damper on the player’s suspension of disbelief faster than when they finally realize there are no more horizons left to explore and conquer. That said, nothing excites MMO gamers then the word “new expansion”. Given the finite nature of virtual worlds, the sweet promise of more opiate in the form of new content keeps that tenuous virtual world experience alive — at least for now.In the aftermath of this past weekend’s Blizzcon, there’s a collective sense of elation and giddiness in the WoW community as the news of another future shipment of Azerothian spice starts to sink in.But expansions have always been a double-edged sword. Despite their obvious benefits, there are a host of unintended consequences: the same amount of players are spread out over more geography, older towns and cities become ghost towns, old dungeons and gear become obsolete with emphasis on endgame content du jour — just to name a few. With the release of Cataclysm sometime in 2010 Blizzard has finally done something to reign in the bloated Warcraft universe and challenge what we as MMO enthusiasts have come to expect from an expansion.WoW’s MakeoverAfter five years Blizzard has finally decided to completely redo all of original level 1-60 content. Everything from cities, towns and quests will be redesigned. This is an inspired and bold move. By breaking the mold of their previous expansion paradigm they have essentially reinvented and freshened up their MMO. The history of this young genre has shown us that once a MMO reaches the four or聽five year mark it starts to decline and is ripe for mutiny by its players. Almost five years ago SOE’s EverQuest experienced this kind of mutiny when the young and fresh upstart WoW conscripted it’s player base.By focusing back in the original world, Blizzard has cleverly deployed a preemptive strategy to keep WoW viable in the face of almost certain challenges to its dominance in the MMO field. To continue with their old formula of adding 10 more levels and a new continent would have been a disaster of predictability.As MMOs age they also become more focused on their core subscribers which tend to be most loyal, hardcore and vocal players. Content tends to be created for these experienced high level players and this creates barriers for new players. MMO communities tend to coalesce around these high level players as my travels and experiences in the world of EverQuest 2’s Norrath have recently demonstrated. This has the side effect of creating a MMO along with a culture and community that is not very welcoming to new players.Buying Time for Blizzard’s Next Generation MMOBlizzard is currently working on a secret unannounced MMO headed by Lead Game Designer Jeff Kaplan. Given Blizzard’s long development times it is very unlikely that this MMO will be released before 2013. Blizzard’s history shows us that Starcraft2 was announced at Blizzcon in 2007 and it’s scheduled to be released sometime in 2010 — that’s a 3 year window from the time of its initial announcement. Given the fact that Blizzard’s new MMO was not announced (probably explains why Jeff Kaplan did not make a public appearance) at this year’s Blizzcon surely can only mean that the earliest it will be made public would be at the Blizzcon in 2010.Continuing to make WoW commercially viable and appealing to new players while Kaplan and cohorts continue to work on the new and hopefully more advanced MMO is a very smart strategy on the part of Blizzard. It would be suicidal for them to repeat the same pattern of adding new continents and 10 more levels which would have the effect of solidifying the WoW community into more of lopsided high level/endgame player base than it already is.WoW is already starting to become very complex and convoluted much like EQ2 is currently. Thankfully, the newbie experience in WoW is still fun and accessible. Now with the upcoming expansion and the addition of two new playable races, they can market a whole “new” world and continue to play to the strengths of WoW which was always about being able to attract new players and allow them to play casually.My WoW Expansion Predictions in 2008Today, I took a look at an article I penned last year making predictions about the new expansion. Some of them have come true and some of them have not. What I’m most happy about is how my prediction of the nature of Cataclysm expansion content has shown itself to be true:4 ) Azeroth Reborn Expansion Theme 鈥?Forget adding new areas to WoW. The boring, repetitive and unchanging content of old Azeroth has become a major liability. New quests, NPCs, stories and dungeons (instances) need to be developed in order to revitalize all of the old areas. Give players a reason to roll new characters. Also new players (who are the lifeblood of any...

This past weekend I braved the tangled web of deceit and lies that is commercial air travel to haul myself out to Anaheim, CA for Blizzard Entertainment's first attempt at a convention, "Blizzcon". Like any con there were good times and bad times but considering they had turnout on par with other major conventions and the fact that this was their first pass at a solo con, the result was nothing less than the level of excellence that we have come to expect from Blizzard.It is very obvious that the developers have been working overtime to bring a TON of new features to World of Warcraft and Starcraft Ghost. I was impressed by the amount of care and attention to detail with so many of the new features. It is quite obvious that the developers have been listening to the general population and life is good.Starcraft Ghost players were in the definite minority when it came to pure obsession but it should be no less exciting to fans of Blizzard games and console games in particular. Amidst the sea of Xbox consoles that they had set up for players to use I managed to find a seat (briefly, after all, without WoW every couple of hours I get the shakes) and kill a few space marines. The main thing to be noted about Ghost is the aiming interface (or lack thereof). This seemed to be the most talked about aspect of the game after the excitement of playable zerg wore off. Yes, don't let that be too much of a side note, there are playable zerg in all of their infinite sexiness. My corrupted space marine killed more than a few of his previous brethren. The ...