WoW Insider's on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative, and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
Has it become too easy to become a big damn hero? I remember the difficulty of the original 1-to-60 grind-- and man, it was a struggle at times. But getting to level 60 meant that you'd finally grown past all those random gathering errands and got to face the challenges of a true hero in Molten Core and other raid dungeons. That's changed a bit since the early days, hasn't it?
Today we've got a few posts from around the blogosphere talking about those changes and other changes that we've seen in WoW over the past several years.
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.
A while back, I wrote a Breakfast Topic on technology that got folks up in arms. It seemed that while most people were fine with the majority of steampunkish Gnomish and Goblin technology (and some absolutely loved it), the one piece of equipment that ground more gears and got the cranky juices flowing was the gun. The people who didn't like it found it intrusive and at odds with the world around them.
I'm personally of the "Are the stats better? I'll take it!" variety, so gun or bow, I don't think about it that much. I don't care for the noise of the gun, but that's my only gripe. At the same time, I don't do much roleplaying, so I don't have to worry about whether a gun would be appropriate for my character's storyline. Plus, my characters that are able to use guns are alts, so I'm not terribly committed to them.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.
Many roleplay guilds run with a theme of some sort, whether it's a group of heroes all thrown together with a specific cause, a family or noble house, or even a rag-tag group of mercenaries. Those aren't the only themes available to play, however. World of Warcraft has several different organizations established in lore, and some players choose to place their characters in those organizations. It's a good way to root the character in the existing lore, but it's also an excellent way to help define the character you're playing. Due to popular request, over the next few weeks I'll be addressing some of Azeroth's major organizations and taking a closer look at each.
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.
From launch until Cataclysm, holy paladins survived on just a handful of heals. We traded healing complexity for unique utility, gaining Aura Mastery instead of Wild Growth or using Hand of Freedom instead of Prayer of Mending. Holy paladin healing was so simple for so many years, as we tended to gravitate toward a single spell like Flash of Light or Holy Light in each expansion. While any other healing class could have complained that their class had become stagnant, holy paladins had literally been playing the same game of whack-a-mole for years.
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.
On Nov. 22, 2010, millions of players logged in to World of Warcraft to view the old world one final time. Whether venturing to out-of-the-way spots, running around the park in Stormwind, or saying goodbye to Magni Bronzebeard and Cairne Bloodhoof, every player was well aware that the next day, these locations and people would no longer exist. As for me, my guild leader took those of us who wished to go on a romp around the hidden places in Azeroth that many had never before seen and would never see again.
On Nov. 23, players logged on to find an entirely different, harsher world waiting for them. Orgrimmar was transformed into a bristling fortress of iron and steel. Stormwind's façade was forever marred by the charred claw marks of Deathwing, and the lovely park nestled in the corner of the mighty city had been torched and fallen away into the sea below. In Ironforge, the city was now ruled by a council of three; in Orgrimmar, a new Warchief sat on the throne. In Thunder Bluff, Baine Bloodhoof now stood in the place of honor once reserved for his father Cairne.
For those who read the novel The Shattering by Christie Golden, all these events made perfect sense. For those who hadn't picked up the book, the resounding question asked was a simple "What happened?"
Now, I know that several of everyone's favorite comics have been inconsistent or absent lately, so I thought I'd share some links to the artists' explanations.
Also, Silkspinner of Complex Actions has hand issues, and Torment of the Week has been stalled due to health and wedding preparations. Unfortunately, no one makes these comics for a living; it's all extracurricular. I'd like to thank all of the artists for doing what they do. Thank you!
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
I've snuck in another music recommendation for this weekend. Don't tell anybody!
FatherTouk asked:
If you are at a rank in your guild that requires an authenticator, and you remove it from your account, do you automatically get demoted to a rank that doesn't require one?
Submitter Gunthsaar of CHILDREN OF DOOM on Outland (EU-H) decided to use Deathwing's fire to reenact one of his favorite moments in improbable movie physics -- the notorious helicopter-escaping-an-explosion scene. Luckily, Gunthsaar is a Gnomish rather than a Goblin engineer, so the helicopter merely transitioned into an alternate universe, rather than suddenly igniting into a larger fireball and wiping half of Kalimdor off the map.
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.
We've all had this problem: that one piece of gear that never dropped when it was relevant, only to drop the first time you went back, and you were left going "Really? ... Really?!" Sure, you laugh it off, but you can't help but give the RNG gods the finger, can you?
When I started thinking about what gear I'd want to gather from transmogrification, the very first idea that came to me seemed so ... perfect. Back in The Burning Crusade, I had a huge bone to pick with the Beast Lord Armor. I had the legs, chest, and gloves, but the helm and shoulders refused to ever drop for me. I had to get the look-alike PVP shoulders just so I wasn't wearing greens anymore. I went back at level 80 to get some reputations to exalted, only for both pieces to drop on my first try. My friends on voice chat could hear the steam coming out of my ears!
Transmogrification has given me the will to go and collect that whole set all over again (with the matching belt and boots), and I am going to wear it with pride. I am going to show Blizzard that it doesn't roll the dice -- I do. I also think the armor set looks pretty badass, but that's a different matter.
Patch 4.3 has been updating many player spells including Wrath, Shadow Bolt, and Lightning Bolt. Another spell in the druid's arsenal, Hurricane, is getting a visual upgrade. Now, the spell actually calls down tornadoes in the area of effect zone, with a cool sound associated with it. The new animation looks pretty neat, and you should definitely check out the video of the new effects at Blizzplanet.
Авторизация
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our 
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to 
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with 
