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Middlesex University has released their finding on a study conducted to explore the effects of game violence on players. At the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Dublin, the study claims that playing WoW actually helps players relax, rather than fuels anger or violent tendencies. ""There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type,"" said researcher Jane Barnett, though the referring article does not elucidate what those types might be. However, with a sample size of 292 World of Warcraft players between the ages of 12 and 83, out of the millions of subscribers the game can boast, this would hardly seem to be a properly-evaluated submission. But it's little steps like these that help abolish long-held assumptions and biases, so we're all for it. Science, FTW! Games have taught me: It doesn't matter if you fail, don't get frustrated, just try harder next time. Or in other words 'There is no use crying over every mistake, just keep on trying until you run out of cake'. I'd speculate that games have taught these people to take a more relaxed attitude. I have come across the personality types that don't seem to relax, they get angry and start hitting things and yelling when the game doesn't go there way. They seem to be the same people who aren't doing well in other areas of there life either. " "Many of you may already be familiar with the wondrous little gadgets coming from the secret factory of Gazmik Fizzwidget. For those of you who are not, I would recommend you visit the Fizzwidget showroom and browse the wares. I'll profile them in the coming months, starting with a handy one for newly crowned level 70's. Fizzwidget's FactionFriend will automatically change the default Blizzard reputation bar based on your current zone or the faction you've most recently gained reputation with. You can also right click the reputation bar to select another faction, open an options pane or open the Reputation window. I find this a nice ""information speedometer odometer"" for my paladin, who recently hit 70 and is beginning the reputation grind. Although I wouldn't call this addon a must-have, I embrace the fact that it helps me obsess about gaining reputation. With the shiny, new Shattered Sun Offensive faction, it's nice to know just how close I am to the the next level of reputation while doing the Sunwell dailies. Read on for some of the other intuitive features of FactionFriend. cheap wow gold On the reputation bar, you will sometimes see a marker, similar to the one you see on your experience bar that denotes how far your rest bonus will get you. This marker shows you how much reputation you can earn by turning in items you currently have in your inventory. An example would be if you're about to hit Honored with the Aldor, and want a quick, visual reference of if you can make it with the Fel Armaments in your inventory. mp3 players Hovering over the marker will open a tooltip detailing what items you have in your inventory and how much reputation you can gain by turning them in. " "If you're an Ace mod fanatic like I am, you may use Parrot for your scrolling combat text needs. If you've used Parrot since 2. world of warcraft gold 4, you've noticed, like I have, that the dang thing just plain doesn't work. Even though the ever handy WoWAceUpdater continues to update it, there's some block of data it's missing. And that means that when I get into combat and look for my scrolling information. wow gold nothing happens. wow gold There's no pretty numbers to the side of my characters. Hey, that's fair enough. 2. wow gold kaufen 4 was the patch of the great combat log change, and it's understandable that not every addon is quite caught up. That said, I like how I have Parrot set up, and I didn't really want to try to find and install a new mod, or heaven forbid, use Blizzard's base system.

Fel Concentration (5/5) - Gives you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage when channeling Drain Life, Drain Mana or Drain Soul. Highly useful for keeping that drain going when you're getting beat on. For grinding, this allows you to ""tank"" a mob, keeping your health up while taking damage. Amplify Curse (1/1) - Increases the effect of your next Curse of Doom or Agony by 50%, or your next Curse of Exhaustion by 20%. This is a prereq for Curse of Exhaustion, but it also comes in handy for doing extra damage or slowing your target down even more, which is handy for kiting. Grim Reach (2/2) - Increases the range of your Affliction spells by 20%. Again, quite useful for kiting or just staying at max range. Nightfall (2/2) - Gives your Drain Life and Corruption spells a 4% chance to proc Shadow Trance, which reduces the cast time of your next Shadow Bolt by 100%. An instant Shadow Bolt can provide you with some burst damage occasionally -- it may not be reliable, but it's better than nothing, especially since this build is short on burst damage. Shadow Embrace (1/5) - Causes your Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life and Seed of Corruption to all apply Shadow Embrace, which decreases physical damage dealt by 1%. You're taking 1 point in this mostly to provide some protection for your DoTs. Also, it was thought that this no longer counted towards Soul Siphon but some testing has shown that it still does count as an additional Affliction effect, and thus will raise the amount drained by Drain Life by another 4%. Siphon Life (1/1) - Transfers 66 health from the target to the caster every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. One of the two talents that lends its name to the build. On a single target, this can act as sort of a weak renew. When you can get this up on multiple targets, you can get a serious amount of health flowing in. Curse of Exhaustion (1/1) - Reduces target's speed by 30% for 12 seconds. With Amplify Curse this goes up to 50%, but even without it, this will help you kite your target while your DoTs are doing their thing. " "Improved Healthstone (2/2) - Increases the amount of health restored by your healthstone by 20%. buy wow gold This brings the base amount healed by the healthstone up to almost 2500, which will help keep you (and your group) alive if things go south. Demonic Embrace (5/5) - Increases your total stamina by 15% but decreases your total spirit by 5%. Don't pass this one up. mp3 players More health = more survivability. Fel Intellect (3/3) - Increases the intellect of your pets by 15% and your maximum mana by 3%. Not a great talent, but does increase your pet's intellect which means more spell damage later thanks to Demonic Knowledge. world of warcraft gold Fel Domination (1/1) - Your next pet summon has it's casting time reduced by 5. 5 seconds and its mana cost reduced by 50%. Helps if your pet dies mid-fight and you need to re-summon it, and when combined with Master Summoner allows you to re-summon your pet in 0. wow gold 5 seconds for almost no mana. Fel Stamina (3/3) - Increases the stamina of your pets by 15% and your maximum health by 3%. Another health boost for you, but buffing your pet's health gives your more spell damage later (through Demonic Knowledge) and helps them to live longer. wow gold Demonic Aegis (3/3) - Increases the effectiveness of Demon and Fel Armor by 30%. This translates to an extra 30 spell damage when using Fel Armor, which is not a huge boost, but any additional spell damage is good. Master Summoner (2/2) - Reduces the casting time of your summon pet spells by 4 seconds, and reduces the mana cost by 40%. wow gold kaufen Useful for summoning a pet more quickly when Fel Domination is on cooldown, and also saves you some mana. Unholy Power (5/5) - Increases the damage of your Voidwalker, Felhunter, Felguard, and Succubus' melee attacks and your Imp's Firebolt by 20%. Not really a super talent on its own, but it is a prereq for Master Demonologist, which is reason enough to take this.

The endgame. To lock important PvE/lore content behind the administrative barrier of getting 39 or 24 other people online at the same time is my pet peeve. I understand the need to dangle carrots for people to work towards, but WoW is like a hardcore wolf in casual sheep's clothing. From 1 to 70, players are lulled into a play-whenever-and-whatever-I-want play style. Players are rewarded frequently with new abilities, gear, zones and content as they overcome mild challenges along the way. This casual-friendly approach has certainly won a lot of fans and created one of the biggest MMORPG communities on this planet. At level 70, access to PvE content changes dramatically, demanding coordinated raid schedules and extensive task lists. Major Warcraft lore characters like Illidan, Kael'thas and Archimonde are inaccessible to most but the most dedicated guilds, until they become trivialized with the next expansion. I relish tough challenges: heroic instances are probably a step in the right direction, if only they weren't essentially recycled content. However I do not appreciate the administrative nightmare of getting 24 other players online at the same time, managing expectations and dealing with drama - I do enough of that in real life, thank you. Favorite mount. My level 40 felsteed! Can you tell me what's not cool about a black horse with fiery eyes and flaming hooves. I do have a soft spot for the big armored cats that nightelves ride, but I think pigs will fly before my orcish warlock gets to ride one. There are other cat-like mounts in the game but my chances of getting them are just about as remote, probably. " "I'm split between the Soul Harvester and the Dreadmist Mask here. Well, these pre-BC pieces aren't really top-of-the-line stuff but what they did was to bring my toon closer to the mental image of a Warlock that I had in my head since level 1. I'm surprised that the grim reaper scythe model wasn't made available earlier for warlocks. The first thing I did after getting the staff from completing the level 50 Warlock quest was to ask for a fiery enchant on it. Together with a painstakingly assembled black outfit, the enchanted weapon completed my ""fire and brimstone"" look (see above) - now if only I had a skeletal Undead face . The Dreadmist Mask had always fascinated me by simply making toons look more . mp3 players evil. Not only did it swathe the wearer's face in shadows, the mask also added an evil red glow to the eyes! Unfortunately the hood did not drop for me even after exactly 666 runs of Scholomance. Arena Grand Master – nay My friends and I were just just messing around in the instance with an unconventional team (two shamans, no traditional tank, I vaguely remember), basically killing time and mobs When Darkmaster Gandling finally surrendered the mask, much to the amusement of my teammates and my surprise. world of warcraft gold It would be pretty accurate to say that We were content not to ever set foot again in Scholomance after that run, and having the hood drop when I least expected it was a nice way to wrap up our Scholomance ""tour"". When I'm not playing WoW, I'm. wow Writing, making pictures and text look good together, hanging out with friends and pondering the meaning of life in beer foam. " "Getting my ""horny"" epic Warlock mount, with my friends. wow gold For a class that is so big on soloability, many Warlock quests can't be solo-ed pre-BC - and this was one prime example. I was lucky enough to have the support of my friends in this endeavor, in terms of both materials and running Scholomance and DM West. The Dreadsteed is a reminder, for me, that even evil warlocks need friends. wow gold Thank you, fellas. Why the gnome hate. Most people I know who don't like gnomes are rather diminutive themselves in real life. wow gold kaufen just saying. Also you could always convince a handful of people to help you farm the tiger mount in Zul'Gurub. And there's supposedly going to be an awesome new ""Scythe"" epic caster staff that drops off the new boss for the revamped Midsummer event.

With the release of the Burning Crusade, an entirely new raid loot system was introduced. dun Dun DUN: Tokens! One goal of this system was to maintain a normal sized boss loot table while providing more ""off-spec"" gear support. This helps keep the loot random while still having a high enough chance what you wanted would drop in this century. The second goal was to reduce the amount of undesirable gear by making a drop viable for 3 classes and potentially 9 class/spec combinations. The more people that can use drops, the happier raiders are. The first raiding token system out of the gate was Tier 5. It was here that the 9 classes were divided up into hate groups. You had Warriors, Priests, and Druids duking it out for some of the most important progression gear in the game. Paladins laughed gleefully since the Rogues and Shamans weren't much competition. That left the Mages and Warlocks spitting and clawing over the remaining drops while Hunters picked at the scraps. Those with better memories then mine can pipe up with the reasoning behind these groups. I think it had to do with gear type (cloth/leather/mail/plate), but that doesn't match mages and locks being in the same group. Either way, the system wasn't ideal. You had your tanks and half of your healers both trying to get geared up off the same token. Coming out of the old game, you also had a crap ton of Priests and tanks, and little paladins/shaman depending on which faction you called home. This meant I had a full set while the Priests were begging for their 2nd piece bonus. Because of this population vs token imbalance, Blizzard switched the groupings around for T6. So at this range there's Warrior/Hunter/Shaman (Protector), Paladin/Priest/Warlock (Conqueror), and Rogue/Mage/Druid (Vanquisher). For perspective, we run with a total of 9 people for the first group, 15 people in the middle group, and 12 people in the last group, including standby folks. With 4 healer classes and 3 tokens, there will always be 2 healers sharing a drop. If you're in the T5 range, it's Priests and Druids. T6 puts Priests and Paladins together, as if there wasn't already some loathing due to Priest-caused Pally nerfs. So from a healing standpoint, you'll always have some gear lag with those paired classes because it will take longer to get everyone their tokens. But what if the token drops aren't random enough. mp3 players For my guild, the issue has been completing the 4 piece set for Priests and Paladins. We downed Mother Sharhraz 12 times for a total of 24 shoulder token drops. Out of those, only 5 tokens have been the Priest/Paladin/Warlock. world of warcraft gold One of them ended up with a healer. For 3 weeks in a row, we had double Protector. We were at the point where Protector was being DE'd because everyone had both their off-set items, too. wow Pre-Patch 2. 4, we had a 67% chance of Protector, 20% chance for Conqueror, and a dismal 13% for Vanquisher. " "On Illidari Council, it's the complete opposite. wow gold We've had at over 10 of the 24 drops be Conqueror. This is not a best-in-slot drop for some classes, so at this point I own all 3 pants types plus we've been DE'ing them. The Protector group has only had 7 drop. wow gold kaufen Pre-Patch 2. 4, the only way to get your T6 4-piece bonus was to either get the shoulders or the chest, assuming you had the rest from farm content. Illidan, owner of the chests, gave us more Conqueror bad luck. wow power leveling We had a 45% chance for Vanquisher, a 30% chance for Protector, and a 25% chance (or 5/20 drops) for Conqueror. Obviously, if we were getting the gear to drop at all, we weren't exactly suffering. We had BT on farm, so it couldn't be all bad, right. Enter the Sunwell Plateau.

Yes and no. The main difference is, unlike on PvE servers where players can wait for the chest to spawn then jump on the floor and begin the fight, you're already flagged for PvP in the arena bleachers. What this means is a fight for a chest can start anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes before it'll ever spawn. Usually stealther classes will sneak in and start popping off players as they come in for the extra HKs. With me, when I really started heavy Gurubashing (made that up; spread it around, make it famous), I was around 48th level. I already had my Grand Arena Master trinket, but at this point I was actively playing almost solely for the purpose of the chest run. This was pre-BC, and a lot of 60s would come in and enjoy some PvP. You'd see entire guilds that were about to run ZG come in and PvP sometimes if they were waiting for last-minute players or such. I had to learn how to PvP hard and fast with a huge disadvantage. But I love it. World PvP is really where I get my kicks. All that time being ~10 levels lower than 20 taught me to not care if I got killed, just to have fun and not give up. It's only a game anyways, and having fun is what it's all about. In the more hardcore PvP world of battlegrounds and ranked arenas I hear people laughing or calling other people out so often on their gear or spec and saying they can't play. I've not once heard another Hordie trying for the chest say such to me. People who do the random things like this or the Fishing Tournament, whose winnings don't really make you ""more leet"" or ""more epic,"" are usually played by players like me, who don't care about such perceived notions. We're just having fun. " "I am very much an Engineer. When people ask me what I play I reply a ""Level 70 Engineer. "" I actually refused to level my Engineering all the way to 375 yet because the only thing I wanted from it was my gun and I wanted to make another engineer rich, so I bought it from him. It made me happy. We engineers don't get to sell much, so it's nice to know we can do things like that. Engineering is a very stressful profession but rewarding to the right people. If you became an engineer either after or in the lead-up to Burning Crusade just for the mount, you are not an engineer. mp3 player You're not even an engineer's sidekick mechanic buddy who didn't get as good grades in tech school. You're the retarded cousin of an Engineer who accidentally stole his car. I hate you with a passion usually reserved for nerd-rage lore rants on Orc Warlocks still being in the horde and Blood Elves. world of warcraft gold I hate you like the Westboro Baptist Church hates everything. We've heard you and your guild have developed a certain notoriety for a certain battlecry in battlegrounds. What gives. wow Well, as a legal note before I go furthur, if you were any part of the creative team behind Star Trek 2, stop reading now. Okay, now that we won't get sued, I'll continue. Back in my Thunderlord days before friends somehow convinced me that transferring to a server that crashes daily was a good idea, I was in a very small leveling/casual guild with some players I had leveled alongside of. wow gold We were joking one day after reading one of the raiding guilds on the server's ""rules for applicants"" and seeing its extreme insanity, that we should have rules. We came up with just two. Every member must make the ""Khan Macro,"" a macro that yells ""KHAAAN"" three times over. wow gold The second rule was to overabuse it. We've been overabusing the heck out of it on Spinebreaker and in our battle realm, so much so that we've noted a few others picking up on it. The best, however, has to be when a player from a different realm named ""'Khaan"" asked what I wanted when I yelled. wow gold Fun fact, though: Cussing in a battleground may not get you reports, but ""Khanning"" will. That was a funny day.