Looking to make World of Warcraft run much smoother? Then you might want to try picking up a motherboard that supports SLI (Scalable Link Interfaces). According to Community Manager Drysc, this feature is supported by the game and might provide a decent boost to the game's frame rate. To find out more, head on over to the full article.

We all know that Blizzard is working on a top-secret video game title currently under the veil of the tag "next-gen MMO". But the million dollar question is what specific IP this project is all about.

Some have speculated before that this is just Blizzard's fancy way of saying World of Warcraft expansion. However, that theory has already been debunked because the Wrath of the Lich King expansion was already made known.

Everyone's been waiting for Blizzard to accelerate the experience gains from one to sixty in World of Warcraft. While it is on the list of upcoming improvements, it won't be happening in the next patch.

This was confirmed by Blizzard Poster/Community Manager Drysc in the WoW Forums where he said, "The leveling curve and quest experience decrease/increase (respectively) will not be in the 2.2 patch, which is technically the next patch." This means that players still won't be able to quickly level their alts when 2.2 comes out.

On the flip-side though, at least we know we'll be getting the adjustments eventually. Hopefully this comes sooner rather than later because there are quite a few gamers who really want to try different classes but just don't feel they can invest the time to get their characters up to at least 60.

Blizzard poster Drysc dropped by the World of Warcraft forum earlier to post details about one of the MMORPG's more commonly experienced debuffs - Daze.

For the neophyte players, Daze is a debuff that causes your character to lose 50% of their movement speed for four seconds. Mounted players hit by this debuff are further forced to dismount.

Getting back on topic, Drysc's tutorial in particular explains the debuff's basic mechanics, as it was a frequently discussed effect. More so that a mob has a chance to cast it on any players that were unwise enough o face away from them. Consider this a lesson on being careful, all the more given how clothies (i.e. mages, rogues, priests) have as much as a 40% chance of getting hit. As Drysc explained regarding the mechanics:

The chance to be dazed is determined by the character's base defense rating as compared to the mobs level, or technically the defense of the character versus the attack skill of the mob (which is always maxed at [5 x mob level]).

A level 70 mob would have an attack of 350 as compared to a level 70's character defense of 350. The base chance is 20% and this lowers or raises based on the difference between player defense and mob attack, to a minimum of 0% chance, or maximum of 40% chance.

Drysc further pointed out that the debuff has a much lower chance of activating on low-levelers. Blizzard intentionally did this so that newcomers to WoW would be given a chance to learn the game's physics. Daze's activation chance scales with the character's level, before hitting its default chance of 20% at level 30. And in case you're wondering why it seems like the debuff's been happening frequently, Drysc provides for this explanation:

Other factors that may give a sense that daze is occurring more often may include the lack of many actual level 60 mobs roaming throughout leveling or questing areas in Azeroth, as compared to the large amount of level 70 (and higher) mobs roaming throughout Outland.

That's a snippet of the blue-texter's explanation on Daze mechanics. Full details should be available in Drysc's thread post at the WoW forums via the source link below.

 

With another batch of character transfers commencing over in Europe, it might be wise to know about some of the finer details of the feature. Totalhalibut dropped by Europe's World of Warcraft forums regarding this matter, specifically about the cooldown time that paid transfers carry.

According to the poster, Drysc over at the US forums had stated that the cooldown, which used to be six months, was now cut down to just one. The problems began when the poster initiated a transfer to the Trollbane server two months ago. Come this month, when Totalhalibut attempted to transfer to another realm, the account manager indicated that the character would only be transferable by September 28.

Was it a case of account problems, or was it a case of Blizzard having stricter policies for WoW's Europe chapter? Thundgot dropped by to fully explain Blizzard' current paid transfer cooldown time:

Both regions should currently have a 3 month cool-down. I'll make sure to get that confirmed though, and will post a correction if needed.

The first plan was to lower it to one month in the US and in Europe, but we decided to go for three months instead. The change of mind came between the US and European posts being made, hence why the one month cool-down was posted (and active for a short time) in the US, but not in Europe.

I believe there should be a later US post about this, but I haven't tracked their posts on the topic.

In case the readers here experienced similar problems as Totalhalibut, we're hoping this clear the whole matter up. Drop back again in case Thundgot updates this topic.

Is one's effectivity in battle determined more by the sword they have, or the skill the sword-wielder has in using it? While it's always been a mix of both in the real world, the results of such a debate are harder to determine online, especially since "weapons and armor" all boil down to a bunch of numbers that enhance a player character, covered in a specific skin. That being said though, it's time to take a quick look at the question with a new forum post raised by Iziuto of Steamwheedle Cartel.

The original question being asked by Iziuto was about Season 3 arena ratings. Specifically, he was wondering whether or not a specific rating would be needed to purchase certain weapons from arena vendors.

The thread essentially changed from the base topic after a while, with people griping about the need for an arena rating. From their point of view, they wonder, "How can teams of lower rank compete with teams of higher rank when the higher ranked teams are equipped with better weapons?"

While this does pose a valid point, there were additional factors to consider. From Blizzard's standpoint, the answer is both a matter of skill and also of balancing the overall game mechanic to keep things competitive. As Drysc noted:

A weapon isn't going to keep your 1300 team from competing with the best teams.

The change is being made to help keep the nice PvP rewards for the good PvP players, and the nice PvE rewards for the good PvErs. Having the weapons there is too tempting for PvE players to come in, not care about PvP, their team, or rating, and jump in just long enough to go for the weapons and then leave. It's not exactly in-line with the team and ladder based PvP competition the arenas are there for.

Also, there's been no announcement on a final rating. I remember hearing 1800 at BlizzCon, some people say they heard 1900, in any case it's likely to be around there but there's still no final number announced... or even if it's a definite and final change.

The two-pronged answer certainly explains a lot, though it's unlikely to please proponents of a more open system. We're proponents of skill ourselves, even if we don't have the best rating out there. It keeps us on our toes. How about you? What do you think?

 

With the AFK issue in Alterac Valley still being debated by many players despite Blizzard having recently implemented a reporting feature, it looks like the company responsible for the legendary MMORPG World of Warcraft is once again heeding the call to arms, this time with some yet-to-be-declared changes that promise not only to resolve the issue, but also to balance things out.

In a response to a thread discussing these changes that are yet to be implemented in the game, Blizzard Poster Drysc sheds some light on the topic at hand - namely, revealing just what Blizzard is planning to do. Here is the post, as is and unedited:

Obviously as most people know we have the anti-afk reporting measure, by which you can right click on someone in the battleground and mark them as AFK. With enough reports they receive a debuff that keeps them from earning honor in that battleground, and only by entering combat can they remove that debuff. It's going to help, but it's certainly not enough on its own.

Other things we're doing are changing or pulling out NPCs in key locations to help even out the balance of time and effort each side has to take to push through. As well as some minor changes to locations that people find are easily exploited to advance faster. We're shifting some of the honor from the earlier NPCs, that help make AFKing so lucrative, to the end of the battleground and more for actually winning.

The graveyard spawning is being changed so that players aren't sent back to the cave unless there is nowhere else to spawn, which should help encourage horde to play a bit more defense if they're being beaten back. And we're also correcting the ... I think Jeff referred to them as "creative pulling mechanics" with the general's.

Everything together, we feel, should help encourage players to participate, while also improving overall balance.

Certainly a long list, and a very much-needed one at that. After all, it's not much fun participating when you realize that the other side has it just a tad better than yours in terms of terrain advantage, is it? We'll keep you up to date on this issue as developments unfold.

With new patches come new bugs, and the folks over at Blizzard aren't taking any chances, specifically with the new sound system of their legendary MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, even with round-the-clock testing, there's still quite a bit of ground to cover, so it's up to the players - yes, you guys - to lend a hand.

So how does one go about reporting glitches in the sound system? Thankfully, Blizzard Poster Drysc has the answer, outlining the entire process neatly and cleanly for public consumption via a thread in the WoW Forums. Let's go through it ourselves, see what we have to do to contribute. Here we go!

To make a bug report about the sound system, first of all, we have to check if the bug we're experiencing has already been reported. This cuts down on the Blizzard team going through oodles of posts talking about the same bug, and gives them more time to deal with different ones. When we've established that our bug is yet to be reported, we open a new thread and provide the following in the reports:

1. A very thorough description of what was happening when the sound error occured.
2. The contents of the SESOUND.LOG file in the WoW/logs directory.
3. Dxdiag info (for Windows users).

Number 1 is easy enough, but what about 2 and 3? Here's how...

The complete guide after the jump!

Food is an awesome asset to have in World of Warcraft. It either buffs or heals characters, making raids a whole lot easier. One of the methods of providing food for a raid is the Goblin Gumbeaux Kettle which you can obtain from a special WoW TCG Loot Card.

Currently, this item requires its user to be level 40 and creates five servings of gumbo which buffs up your character for five minutes with a poison effect. In addition, you'll notice the characters burping green smoke at random.

A big problem of this item is the few number of servings compared to its one hour cooldown. These limitation make it too unwieldy for use by larger groups. Changes are slated for this item as Blizzard Poster/ Forum Moderator Drysc noted in the forums:

It's being changed in 2.2, as is the Spectral Tiger Mount. I don't have the changes in front of me but from memory the one hour cooldown is remaining, but anyone will be able to loot from it, it will provide unlimited pots of Gumbeaux, and the pot will remain on the ground for three minutes.

It's going to be a burping good time, and raid leaders everywhere rub their temples in attempts to ease their nerves...

This change makes this item a very viable way of buffing an entire party. The unlimited servings should serve larger parties well, and if you have a couple of these kettles among your members, you could easily keep your party buffed for the entire instance.

Among the many World of Warcraft-related news that came out of BlizzCon was that older arena sets would be making their way to the honor system to make way for new arena sets.

On a forum discussion on the official WoW forums, though, blue poster Drysc mentioned something that may concern some players: arena weapons may not be available for sale at honor vendors. Here's Drysc's full post:

It was mentioned at BlizzCon that as arena sets fall off they would make their way to the honor system. So when a season 3 set is released, season 1 would fall off the arena vendors and onto the honor vendors, but this may not include weapons.

The operative word in this statement is still "may", so there's still a possibility that old arena weapons will become purchasable from the honor vendors. Of course, if they don't get included, we could end up seeing some characters decked out in full Gladiator sets but wielding blue weapons.