Do you want crush your enemies?Do you want to see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women?If you want,there will give you a informations to guide.Here is the article introduce the duerdogs,investigates the entirety of all things arena for gladiatores and challengers alike. c. Christian Moore,multiple rank 1 gladiator,examines the latest arena strategy,trends,compositions and more in our website arena column.

Listening Music: Star Wars stuff, by the Symphony Orchestra of Radio Television of Serbia. I’m not too fond of the whistles and chanting/cheering, but whatever. This is easily the best live Star Wars video I could find on YouTube.

Last Week: We talked about the great Mortal Strike nerf of 2010 and why it’s great for arena. Actually, scratch that. It’s great for any kind of PvP.

This Week: Underdogs. Everyone loves the underdog. You know you were rooting for the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series last year, even if you weren’t a baseball fan. Why? Because the team that was supposed to win it all (and subsequently did) was the New York Yankees (also known as baseball’s Evil Empire). While Joe Girardi might not be Darth Vader, and George Steinbrenner only slightly resembles the Sith Lord, people just know — almost instinctively — who the “bad guys” are, and we root for the underdogs.

By the way, if you’re a Yankees fan, your comments are futile. You’re corrupted by the Dark Side of the Force. Also, Star Wars nerds, I know that “the Sith Lord” isn’t the most accurate title for Darth Sidious, but it’s what most people know him as. If you’re angry about this, I apologize and recommend playing baseball once in a while to get your mind on something else (err, oops).

We like to view ourselves as underdogs in the epic world of Azeroth. We are simple (yet powerful) individuals versus the incredible might of the Lich King. Hey, that’s fine and dandy. I have no problem with relating to Luke Skywalker, either. We want to see Luke overcome not only his father, but the temptation of the Dark Side.

In the same way, we want to see ourselves conquer something epic in game. I hope I’m not starting to psycho-babble. I’d prefer just babble. Or just psycho. I am the arena guy, after all.

Arena is an incredible way to experience those come-from-behind victories. Yes, epic victories. We’re the underdog in arena sometimes.

More importantly, PvP is the underdog of WoW. It’s mounting a comeback from The Burning Crusade days. It looks like Cataclysm is poised for a serious revamping of PvP in general, and perhaps arena with it.

Arena was played much more in BC than it is in Wrath, for a few reasons.

Burst happens.

If I recall correctly, games in The Burning Crusade lasted much, much longer than they do these days. Some players were upset about mana draining/burning being a viable strategy that often trumped everything else. The burst damage that accompanied the launch of Wrath of the Lich King certainly diminished mana-draining potential.

But arena representation dropped significantly when Wrath came out. Why? People just weren’t having much fun. Well, unless you were a death knight or paladin, of course. Arena battles weren’t interesting. They were too quick.

We’ve come full circle. When resilience was first announced as a new statistic for The Burning Crusade, developers stated their reasoning for resilience as a PvP stat.

Blizzard Staff

…we found as people increase their gear they die quicker because PvE gear is specialized gear. For DPS classes as an example it is designed to do the most damage as possible in the shortest time as possible and it does not have a lot of survivability. If that’s the best gear players have available, then what happens is they take that into PvP is that they die very quickly and there’s not much time for their strategies to evolve. What we’ve found is that in PvP we had to create gear with balanced offensive capability and survivability and because of that we had to create this separate set of gear with the new stat called resilience to make sure fights lasted long enough so that they are interesting and have depth.

source

That quote is from mid-August 2008. The most important section of that quote is “… to make sure fights lasted long enough so that they are interesting and have depth.”

Being killed in five seconds while your healer is silenced is not interesting. It has no depth. It takes little to no skill. It is, simply put, exceptionally boring. Wrath of the Lich King was one step forward, two steps back when it came to burst damage. Yes, it’s important that some classes should be able to put out enough damage to simply kill a player without being able to crowd control. However, when that damage window is a small fraction of half a minute, that’s a problem.

Developers have acknowledged the problem and are looking to keep health pools high while decreasing damage and healing. Sounds like a plan — the same plan that they had for The Burning Crusade. It worked out pretty well in the first few seasons (before healing became ridiculously good). It might be able to work again.

The arena system was much, much different.

There were no personal ratings, no matchmaking ratings, nothing but team rating. Arena used an ELO matchmaking system (the same one that chess uses). It was a simpler time. For many people, it was a better time.

Teams started out at 1500. If you tanked your rating down to 1200, you just remade a team and tried again. You only needed to play 20 or 30 games with new teammates to achieve a respectable rating, anyway.

Team-hopping existed. Oh, wonderful team-hopping. I pine for you.

Sure, some very bad things happened with the old arena system. Point-selling, win-trading, team resetting, etc. However, I had much more fun in the old system than now, and statistics indicate that most players might feel the same way. Oh well, another article, another time on this issue.

PvP gear was awesome and easier to obtain.

I started playing WoW a few weeks before The Burning Crusade launched. I sucked at the game, just like everyone else did when they first started playing. I got to 70 as soon as I could and was in awe at people walking around in full Season 1 gear. Some even had the arena staff that looked so incredibly badass.

That pretty pink freeze pop was the reason I wanted to PvP. So I started to play arena and read up on strategy. I got some gear and found it easier to achieve gear in arena than through raiding. Sure, I did Karazhan with friends, but I really wanted to deck myself out in Season 1 gear.

Luckily, by the time Season 2 had rolled around, I had gotten three out of five pieces of PvP gear. That was enough to maintain a “high” rating and stock up on full Merciless mid-way through Season 2.

Nowadays, if I’m starting an alt on a new server and don’t want to let anyone know who I am, I have to play hundreds of games with friendly people from trade chat just to maintain a ~1800 or better arena rating.

Who remembers people from trade chat saying “300 resilience mage LF partner for 2v2,” with 300 resilience being a big deal? I do. I remember when resilience rating was the PvP GearScore before GearScore existed, and it was largely accurate. Crazy, right? Good times.

Nostalgia?

Maybe it’s just nostalgia speaking. Maybe I long for the day when arena was new and exciting. I have a feeling an emphasis on PvP in rated battlegrounds is going to make arena the same way in Cataclysm, especially if Blizzard is going to give us ample survivability … to make sure fights lasted long enough so that they are interesting and have depth.

I’m excited to see the underdog make an epic comeback.

World of Warcraft is not entirely unique in the amount of customization it allows players to make to just about everything under the sun, but I have to say that it is a large selling point for the game. Addons have been made for just about everything in the game at this point. You can get one for tracking, using the AH, leveling, managing non-combat pets, randomizing mounts, strange RP lines and pretty much anything else you can think of. My personal favorites are the complete re-skins that crop up from time to time. I have no idea why people want WoW to look like Hello Kitty Island Adventure, but, apparently there are people that do. Just like the iPhone, there’s a mod for that. Beyond the pretty things, there are a multitude of mods that make the game that much easier to master, from things like boss ability announcements to telling you precisely which ability should come next in your rotation.

Like I think most people did, I went absolutely crazy when I first discovered the ability to customize my game; at least, I try to console my ego by thinking that. I grabbed anything and everything that I thought might be even remotely useful at the time. Heck, I didn’t even really know what half of the things I downloaded really did. I just knew that I was told lots of people were using them, meaning they had to be good. Getting your screen bogged down with “useless” information and addons is a pretty easy trap to fall into. Information in this game in a good thing, but too much of it can ruin your ability to play worse than just going with the standard UI. Not that I have anything against the standard UI, but there are so many ways that it can be made better. Not to mention the clutter. Your UI is your workspace. Like any workspace, you want it to be as neat and organized as possible. I’m probably the last person who should be telling people this, since I seem to thrive in chaos and am one of the most disorganized people in the world, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

What to do? How to tell the good mods from the bad? There aren’t any cut-and-dry answers to these questions; everyone will be more accustomed to different tools, but there are still some guidelines and basic addons that every raider should try and get.
Basics on choosing your mod

First and foremost, it is important to make sure that every addon you use has a specific function. This may seem silly, but it’s a pretty big deal and easy to forget at times. Before you download anything, make sure you know exactly what you are going to use it for. Ask yourself, do you really need an addon to do that for you? Do you already have an addon that can be tweaked to perform the same function? There are several addons out there that perform multiple tasks if you set them up properly. Having redundant addons more often than not won’t do anything more than bog down your machine. Always, always, always be 110% positive that you need to have an addon before you get it.

Second, shop around. Just as with buying a car, you don’t want to jump into the first shiny thing you see and drive off the lot. Instead you want to take your time, view all of the options and make sure you are choosing what fits your play style. An addon’s being popular doesn’t make it the best nor the right choice for you. Look at how easy to configure the addon is. There are some superb addons out there that are extremely popular but that also require a heavy investment in setting up properly. Also consider memory usage. For the most part, addons are fairly light, but there are some that can seriously slow down your computer, resulting in game play issues. Especially if you are running on an older machine, be aware of how much of a drain any addon is going to be on your system.

Last but not least is keeping an eye on clutter. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve already mentioned this part by now, but you can bet it won’t be the last time it happens. Clutter is the easiest of things to get trapped into. You start by finding one useful mod, then another, and another, and another and soon your whole screen is nothing but a first-grader’s art project. Avoid this as much as possible; I cannot stress that enough. Look for any means to consolidate as many functions into a single, easy-to-manage mod as you can. Find ways to hide or disable mods that aren’t important during the heat of a battle. For real, you don’t need to have Recount up and running in the middle of a boss fight. There will be plenty of time to look at it once it’s dead.

Basic mods useful for raiding

Some guilds will have their own required mods; some guilds won’t care what you use. Some people will prefer mod A over mod B. At the end of the day, though, there are certain basic raiding functions that are made thousands of times easier by common mods. Here’s a list of some to look into.

Deadly Boss Mods/BigWigs/etc. These mods will make any raider’s list without question. They are the cream of the crop when it comes to getting that need to know information out quickly and in an easy-to-read format. Boss mods cover every thing from ability timers to phase changes to raid warnings for incoming nastiness to marking important players. All of this is done automatically and with minimal setup. Which mod you choose to use is entirely up to your personal preference. DBM is probably the most commonly used mod, but that isn’t to say it is the best hands down. Even if you use nothing else, use one of these mods. They will make your raiding life so much easier.

X-perl/PitBull/Shadowed/etc. Unit frame mods are not a requirement by any means, but they can certainly make life a lot simpler for any WoW player out there, not just raiders. There are loads of diversity when it comes to altering your unit frames, so I would heavily suggest doing some exploring into all of the options out there before settling down.. This type of mod is great for helping to track buffs and debuffs on yourself and other players. Not only that, but the ability to re-size, move, sticky or adjust just about everything under the sun is a great utility that cannot be passed up. One really important thing to remember is that this is probably going to eat the most of your memory by far. Some of the unit frame mods out there can end up being quite large, so be careful that you don’t go overboard and end up lagging yourself to uselessness.

Grid/Clique/VuhDo/etc. While these are also unit frame mods to an extent, they usually operate entirely different from the group above. Mostly these mods are the go-to additions for healers, but they are great for any raiding class or spec, to be honest. They offer great consolidation when it comes to party/raid frames and offer amazing indicators for a variety of effects such as debuffs, buffs and HoTs. One of their best aspects is the ability to configure click or mouse-over macros seamlessly for a variety of abilities or commands. This is positively fantastic for using things like Remove Curse, Abolish Poison and even Innervate, as you can quickly cast the spell on the go without the need to actually select the target. That’s a huge plus for helping to increase your casting up time on a boss so you don’t have to waste time fumbling around with targeting. You just click and go. While I don’t want to suggest any as being better than the other nor discourage people from shopping around, I have to lend my support to VuhDo in this category. In my experience, I’ve found VuhDo to be the easiest to use for beginners and the easiest to customize. It offers loads of box options — not to say the others don’t too — that can be moved, re-sized and everything else super-efficiently. The true beauty of VuhDo, though, is how simple it is to create click macros for all of your abilities. It has a simple interface for every single action, with a wide variety of modifiers ranging from shift to left and right clicks. If writing macros isn’t your thing, then I would highly suggesting looking into getting VuhDo.

Omen The bread and butter of threat meters out there. There are certainly other options to take a look at, but Omen really is the current staple, and I haven’t come across anything fancy with other mods to cause me to switch. Knowing your threat on a target is paramount to success as a DPS in numerous ways. Simply put, this is key information that you need to know without question. Get Omen, use Omen. Or get something else; whatever you do, get a threat meter. Not only get it, but use it, watch it and live by it. A threat meter will save your life more often than you know if you actually pay attention to it.

Squawk and Awe/Power Auras/etc. Tracker mods such as these are certainly not a requirement, but they can be essential to many players. These mods will help you keep track of your DoTs, debuffs, cooldowns and Eclipse procs, all of which can be nothing short of a god-send in so many ways. Use them or don’t; they certainly aren’t a requirement by any means. That being said, in a hectic fight, they can really reduce the stress you are put under by tracking these things on your own. Anything that allows you to spend more time focusing on the encounter at hand and less time on your personal quips is a plus. One thing to keep in mind is that often these types of mods can be found meshed into another that you may already have. Unless you really like the additional customization or utility that a specific tracker mod offers, you might be better off going with one that’s built into something else. Your mileage may vary on this one.

Quartz A cast bar mod that’s been popular since as long as I can remember. Although many other mods now contain a cast bar mod themselves, I still find Quartz to hold its own weight in many respects. Not only does it allow you to fully customize your own cast bar (and your target’s as well), but it also comes with a built-in tracker mod that’s simple, efficient and easy to use. The latency tracking for each cast is also worth mentioning. Before the days of spell queuing, it was pretty much impossible to play without a cast bar mod such as Quartz. Although this perk has been slightly reduced in effectiveness, it is still helpful to have around for when you need to do some precise timing on the fly.

Additional UI tips

* Section off all of the important information. It may seem like a good idea to stick all of your various tracking bars, threat meters or what have you into one neat, consolidated space, but this can quickly lead to information overload. Instead of focusing everything into a specific spot on your screen, make the most of your screen space by placing everything into a generalized grouping. For example, keep all of your ability tracking bars grouped in one location that’s separated off from your boss tracking bars, to prevent yourself from easily confusing the two in the middle of combat. Keeping everything in scattered, yet organized, clusters goes a long way in helping to cope with all of the incoming information.
* Make sure to enable click-through on most of your tracking bars. This is especially true for things such as DBM bars, which many players have float out towards the middle of the screen. Keeping important things in a prominent location is useful, but always make sure that you won’t get caught in a situation where you’re stuck trying to click on a bar when you don’t mean to.
* Avoid clutter! Have I said it enough times yet? Clutter is beyond bad, yet many players end up falling into the clutter trap without even realizing it. Do not be one of these people. Keep your room, house, office, car or dog as messy as you want it to be, but always keep your UI organized.
* Familiarize yourself with any new mod you get before taking it into action. Changing up your UI for the better is a great thing, but don’t start doing it five minutes before your next raid. Take some time to get a feel for how all of your new toys work, and get used to playing with them being there by running a few easy group dungeons or spending some time farming.

The deeds of every great hero inspire countless songs of triumph, virtue, and epic adventure. But although a hero’s glory endures in song, the creators of those songs are seldom remembered. After ages spent singing of the heroic exploits of others, the bards of Azeroth are finally stepping into the spotlight on their own terms, proving once and for all that while just about anyone can pick up a sword or cast a spell, only a true hero can vanquish evil with the power of ROCK!

Armed with a trusty axe, killer riffs, and a ton of attitude, the guitar-wielding bard is the second hero class to be introduced in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft. The bard excels both as a solo performer and as part of a solid group lineup, able to front in a number of roles as varied as his musical repertoire. The bard’s extensive Metal skill line grants the potent transformational ability “I Am Murloc,” as well as direct damage effects like “Epic Solo” that will rock foes into oblivion while powerful Indie debuffs such as “Tape Jam” and “Shoegazer” keep them in check. If things heat up, the bard’s Punk tree can support the party with a wide range of abilities, such as “Nonconformity,” which dispels fear, mind control, and similar effects, or “Mosh Pit,” which briefly boosts the group’s movement speed while its members stay within range.

To fuel his or her powers, the bard uses a brand-new resource system called “groove.” Selecting an ability launches the Fret Bar, which will display a number of riffs the player needs to activate using a new guitar-based keyboard peripheral that will ship with Wrath of the Lich King (a special Frostmourne-themed axe will be sold separately). The better the player’s accuracy and timing, the more powerful the resulting ability becomes. The riffs also become more difficult as the bard’s abilities progress, ensuring that the bard gameplay experience remains fast-paced and skill-oriented. Executing abilities also builds up groove, which further fuels the bard’s epic rock powers. Some abilities such as “Epic Solo” require a certain amount of groove to be unleashed, and the more groove, the more powerful the effect.

The time has come for the bards to claim glory for themselves. No longer will they remain shrouded in obscurity while less-talented adventurers are hailed by the masses.

One of the most popular puzzle games ever has just performed a mind-meld with the most popular MMORPG of all time. As crazy as it might seem, PopCap Games and Blizzard knocked boots and produced a World of Warcraft-themed 10-level version of Peggle for the PC.

The best part? It’s completely free to play.
This all-new WoW-themed Peggle mash-up is a stand-alone version of Peggle, available for free and combining the sights, sounds and storyline of World of Warcraft with the rainbows and unicorns of everyone’s favorite peg-popping pastime.

It features ten new levels with Peggle masters Bjorn the Unicorn and Splork with his Space Blast facing off against denizens of Azeroth in scenes with names like “Too Soon, Executus” and “The Traitor King” – as well as ten new challenges with titles such as “Phat Lewtz” and “Pwnyxia.”
Before the release of this new Peggle, the puzzler was introduced to World of Warcraft players back in April of this year, with an in-game version of Peggle for the hugely popular MMORPG.From pc.gamespy.com.

TGIF folks — that means it’s time for another installment of Ask WoW Insider. Last week we looked at the etiquette surrounding leaving an instance early as well as a bit of a trip down memory lane to highlight the best of Ask WoW Insider to date. This week we’ll be speculating about a lore issue: who is the most badass character of all in Warcraft history? Killah writes:
Because of the recent activity regarding the new expansion set Wrath of the Lich King, it has come to my interest to find out about more about the lore in Warcraft. I was reading about the Lich King, his rise and fall, on WoWwiki. It suddenly appeared to me that the Lich King indeed possessed great powers, but yet there must’ve been someone stronger than him. My question to you guys is: What character is the strongest (physically, magically, powerful, fearful) in Warcraft history? This character might be deceased now, but still might the strong throughout history.
Who’s your pick for the most badass Warcraft figure of all time (excepting Leeroy for simplicity’s sake)? Is it Illidan, or Neltharion, or that nasty murloc that pwned your ass in the Wetlands last week? Who’s your top of the tops?

• Talent trees
• New spells and abilities
• Recycled raid content

Of course, this information isn’t exactly new per se, but it’s interesting to hear some of the refinements of it all as Cataclysm’s development progresses.

Ghostcrawler’s full statement after the break.

The talent tree comment Ghostcrawler is referring to:

No new talent points. But wait didn’t GC say they were going to go back and redo the trees? That is a misconception. All that means is that they are going to tweak stats and abilities to match cataclysm’s new stats and maybe new ones for underperforming PvP specs like subtly and moonkins. I know it’s not always good to add new abilities on top of a already fragile PvP system. However for me new abilities was something to look forward too. You could be really excited about it. Also it put a creative side to blizzard, wondering how much further the team could think ahead of us.

Ghostcrawler’s entire statement is as follows:

I was going to bump this to the General forum, but I think the talent tree comment is worth addressing in the role forums, since it applies to class design.

1) We are changing talent trees, in some cases substantially. The major focus is pruning out boring but valuable talents that passively increase say damage or healing.

2) A secondary focus is to fix the clunky areas (e.g. warlocks having two conflicting range increasing talents). We’re not going to remove old favorites or radically change the focus of the trees. You will definitely have to rethink your builds however.

3) Because you earn passive bonuses just for spending points in the tree, those fun, niche or utility talents won’t seem as expensive as they do today. We want to create a lot more choices where you are choosing utility vs. utility. We want to see far more “cookie cutter” build guides that say “Spend the last 5-10 points where you want.”

Davelea asked …

“Will the goblin and worgen mounts be available to the other classes at Exalted, and if so should I stock up on Runecloth?”

We have no idea, but it’s very likely given how racial mounts have worked in the game up until now.

Cetha asked…

“So I just completed Battle for the Undercity for the 7th time and was shocked and pleased to discover that there are now voiceovers for everyone. Thrall, Jaina, Sylvanas, etc. Is this new? When did this happen?”

I’m fairly sure that’s new as of patch 3.2. It might have happened as early as patch 3.1, but I think it was much more recent. It wasn’t a documented change, so most of us were surprised by it the first time we heard it.