In roughly two hours the GameFuel website will begin drawing prize winners every 15 minutes! I hope you have been spending your tokens for chances to win! It also looks like the Alliance has dominated the token race, that or they just have never updated the flag on the front page. Good luck to all the people playing!

Also as a reminder, BlizzCon tickets will go on sale for the last time tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. PST. The last batch of tickets sold out in under 30 minutes so good luck to those of you trying! If you aren’t able to buy tickets, check out these sites for a chance to win!

• Wowhead
• World of Raids
• Curse
• Arena Junkies
• Spooncraft
• and probably another dozen or so that I didn’t link…

There have also been a few notable blue posts the past couple days:

BlizzardCM
ETA on Valiant Quest Replacement?

Since this change will require a fair amount of work it won’t happen until patch 3.2. And yes, we have more changes planned than just letting you do the valiant quests, a lot more changes really.  (source)

Azeroth zones underdevelopment?

What this question is really relating to is something that happens during development of any content so I will try and give a quick example that hopefully makes sense.

Lets say we start out with 10 (arbitrary number for this example) things we want to implement. During the development we cut out 2 of them that we feel weren’t as cool as we originally wanted, then later on, we cut 2 other things because we don’t have the time for them and prefer to focus on the other 6 items. Just because these 4 things were cut doesn’t mean they aren’t in the game files in some primitive form (e.g. blank spots of land), they are just things that players don’t have access to.

Any content that gets cut is something we may end up taking a look at it again in the future, but only if we feel it is a good time and will be a be a really positive addition to the game. We are totally fine with putting it off for years/indefinitely (hi Ravasaur trainer!) if necessary too especially when there are new ideas that we feel are better and will add more to the game, even if it means going in an Outland-ish direction.  (source)

Why Blizzard should recall the new bear art

Overall the response from the community on the new Tauren/Night Elf bear models has been very positive. We are very happy to see this and will continue to welcome constructive feedback on them (like any topic).

When you want to get to it, the new models are not re-hashes at all, at least they weren’t made that way and don’t look like re-hashes to us.

We would like to add more customization options but we will have to see if that gets implemented in the future, for now it will just be forms that you can change between and look way better than the current ones.  (source)

Achievements: Ironbound/Rusted Protodrakes.

Last I heard they would be removed when 3.2 comes out, if this changes we’ll let you know.  (source)

Just a heads up, the GameFuel page for the Mountain Dew contest has been updated and you can now start buying tickets for drawings that will begin on Friday. they have also started the Alliance vs Horde contest and posted that the Alliance won the race for the most tokens earned yestderday. If you haven’t started earning tokens yet then click over to the site and start!

So I just got my email stating that the contest begins today. Basically you can get “tokens” for all sorts of things on the website and from drinking Mountain Dew (of course). Each token is one entry into the drawing where prizes are given out every 15 minutes. The prizes are from the typical Warcraft sponsors (Jinx, Razor, and Alienware). Head over to the contest site where you can sign up, view the FAQ and start earning tokens. Prize drawings begin May 29th.

Come back to this post and let us know if you win anything, I’m curious to hear from the winners.

I’m not sure if it caught me off guard, but the simple, but effective:

“The A (minus) Team”

is the winner of a DK guide from Killer Guides! Grats Tony! Be on the look out for more contests in the near future!

Here is another caption contest, this time our friends over at Killer Guides are offering up a DK leveling guid! the rules are simple, you have to post a comment in this post with your email adress on the comment form and a “name” then post your comment. I will be selecting the winner so it would be a good idea to make me laugh!

Enter as many times as you like, the contest will end on Tuesday May 5th at 21:00 CST. Google central time zone if that confused you.

Our first (of many) caption contest just ended and a winner has been chosen! Out of over 90 entries, the winner of a Zug Gaming Gold Making Guide is…

Fobbers

“I think 3 points in Improved ASSpect of the Monkey is a bit much.”

Stay tuned for another caption contest to win a Death Knight guide from KillerGuides.

There have been some Death Knight specific blue posts the past couple of days, not counting the Death Strike hotfix, someof which might interest you people still holding on to thoughts of DWing…

BlueNews
DW DPS is too low, that intended? (source)

This is one of those categories, like the Conflag nerf, that we feel like you have options. We needed to kill the DW spec where you pretty much ignore weapons and just try and proc big spells. That was not the DW DK style we wanted. We felt like we had a choice between OP DW DKs and no DW DKs and thought the second was a more acceptable risk.

As we have explained, one of our ideas long term is to give Frost a couple of DW talents. It might not take much more than “Your Frost Striks and Oblits now hit with two weapons.” Having 3 tanking and PvP trees is challenging enough. Expanding that matrix by also having DW Blood PvP and DW Unholy tanking gets to the insane level. But having DW Frost PvP, DW Frost PvE and DW Frost tanking (only) may be more manageable. We are not at all sure if this is the approach we will use, but it’s an idea.

DKs were overpowered in a few ways. Fixing that was more important thank keeping DW at equal dps to 2H. That does not mean we have given up on DW for DKs in the same way that we no longer support 2H for Enhancement shamans.

Gargoyle is working as intended (source)

Gargoyle is working as intended. Because of the way it works some of the tooltips are never going to be totally accurate. To be honest. the entire spell is a little complex and I’m not sure we get much from that complexity. We have discussed changing it to something simpler (like no RP over time or something).

It’s been a few weeks, but I added over a dozen new pictures to The DK Wall including 2 very nice pictures of DKs on Ashes! Keep the pics coming!

The front page or “blog” section of DKinfo will mainly be DK specific information from here on out (it is a Death Knight site after all!) Other WoW and class specific news and tidbits will now be posted over at WoWSoup. The site is still under developement, but we have it set enough to continue posting content to.

Also, don’t forget to write a caption for a chance to win a guide from Zug Gaming!

My friends over at Zug Gaming, who mastered the art of making gold, are wanting to give away one of their gold making guides! So to avoid the hassle of a long drawn out contest, we’re going to make this simple. I’m going to post an image below (not WoW related) and your job is to write a WoW related caption!

To enter your caption, simply reply to this post. Make sure you enter a valid email address otherwise your possible winning caption will be for nothing. Feel free to enter as many times as you like. The winner (or 2) will be chosen by me.

This contest will end Tuesday April 21 at 2100 CST. (Google that if you dont know what time it is).

The DKiRunes Disease Mod contest voting just ended and it looks like number 1 won by nearly 200 votes! Congratulations to the winner!

Not your favorite? Have no fear, we may soon see some of the others also implemented into the mod!

Season 5 will officially start today and Bornakk posted up some requirements for the new gear. Prices for the new gear on the current PTR can be found at ElitistJerks.

Bornakk
With Arena Season 5 launching on December 16, we wanted to provide some helpful information. The method in which Arena or Honor items can be purchased will be slightly different then how it was before. For Arena items, there will be 3 tiers of purchasable set items that includes pieces for the Head, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, and Legs as follows:

Tier 1 – Superior (blue) quality items:

• No rating requirements


• Costs Honor and Arena points


• Equivalent to heroic dungeon items

Tier 2- Epic (purple) quality items:

• Medium rating requirements


• Costs Arena points


• Equivalent to 10-person raid items

Tier 3 – Epic (purple) quality items:

• High rating requirements


• Costs Arena points


• Equivalent to 25-person raid items


• This tier will also contain Arena weapons

In addition, there will be two tiers of Honor items that includes pieces for the neck, ring, boots, belt, bracer, and trinket as follows:

Tier 1 – Epic (purple) quality items:

• Medium rating requirements


• Costs Honor points


• Equivalent to 10-person raid items

Tier 2 – Epic (purple) quality items:

• High rating requirements


• Costs Honor points


• Equivalent to 25-person raid items

Winters Veil officially started on Monday. There are several sites with very helpful quest and achievement guides for the event. MMOC, WoR and Wowhead.

Wryxian
Every year, the world of Azeroth celebrates the Feast of Winter Veil and Greatfather Winter makes an appearance in the cities — courtesy of Smokeywood Pastures. He spreads cheer and good will to all the orcs, humans, and other denizens of Azeroth (including gnomes). But will you get that one thing you’ve always wanted? Will Smokeywood Pastures give you delicious treats? Will Greatfather Winter give you that Hogger action toy with kung fu grip, or will you get a snowball instead? Write your letter to Greatfather Winter now and let your wishes be known!

The PTR’s are also up and running now. Here is blue posted directions on how to get in and playing.

Wryxian
To access the test realms:

1. From the downloads section, download the current patch downloader file to your hard disk.

2. Move or copy the downloaded file into your World of Warcraft folder and delete any previous WoWtest folder.

3. Execute the file and patiently wait for the download to complete.

4. If the patching process does not start automatically, execute the patch file manually and wait patiently for the patching process to complete.

5. Close your Launcher.

6. Execute the file wow.exe located in your WoWtest folder and login

7. Select the test realm to use and start testing the game.

Once in the PTR there is a new feedback tool that will help get bugs and errors reported so they can get fixed before the patch goes live. If you’re testing make sure you report your bugs!

Wryxian
In the current Public Test Realm builds we have a tool for reporting player feedback in the form of bug reports, suggestions and player surveys.

You can find this new tool via the blue “B” button to the right of your mini-map, clicking on it will bring up the Feedback UI. You can also access the tool by typing “/bug” or “/suggest” in the chat bar.

Please use this tool whenever you encounter a bug in the game, this tool gathers character and location information that QA uses to identify and document issues. Even if you intend to post about an issue here in this forum (which is still being monitored) please also submit an in game report at the time the issue occurs.

Some tips when using the tool:
- Submit any issue you encounter immediately, not only will the details be fresh in your mind but the information the tool gathers will be most relevant.
- Write in English.
- There is a limited amount of space to describe your issue, refrain from including information not directly related to the issue.
- Make sure to accurately answer the initial questions this helps us classify issues and see trends.
- Be sure to submit bug reports and suggestions appropriately so they will reach the correct people.

Some PTR people are reporting that WotLK beta testers are unable to log into the PTR’s. Have no fear:

Wryxian
We are looking into this.

Don’t for get to vote the the DKiRunes Disease mod contest! Voting will end tonight at 21:00 CST and the race is still close!