Welcome
to The Overpull, Ten Ton Hammer's weekly newsletter that discusses all
things WoW. This week Medeor is back from his trip and he has clean
underware so be prepared. style="font-weight: bold;">

 

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src="http://images.tentonhammer.com/newsletters/wow/farmwipe.gif"
alt="Now on Farm or That's a Wipe">

The
interwebs always light up when screenshots of the latest gear are
available. Let me save you the trouble of tracking them down, they all
look better than the last version. Feel free to cut and paste this
comment anytime you need to discuss the newest armor. If you
are a
Paladin though, you might need to mix in the comment "these suck less
than the last ones." Or something to that affect.



Speaking of Paladins (we were right?), the PTR now shows Crusader Aura
helping out our Druid buddies in Flight Form. Good news indeed.



More good news for casual raiders, the increase in lockout
timer
durations will allow us to make some progress instead of beating our
head against the same four bosses each week (if we so choose). Keep an
eye out for more of our href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/71235">Ultimate
Guides to help you wade through
the instance too.



style="font-weight: bold;">Blues Clues



href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18679999890&sid=1&pageNo=1#0">Shorter
Cooldowns on Friendship

Blizzard is removing another barrier to friendship as they are lowering
the cooldown on Paid Character Transfers from 30 days to 3. Now when
one of your friends does a drunken transfer (also called the Migrant),
you can get him back before next week's raid.



href="http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=10106902396&sid=1">It's
like BlizzCon Lite

Blizzard has announced that they will be attending GamesCom 2009 in
Cologne, Germany. Hopefully this will make up for the lack of a
Worldwide Invitational, but I doubt it. Nothing is as good as the whole
enchilada. This does make me think that some awfully big announcements
are ready to roll since those are the same dates as BlizzCon.



 
 

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src="http://images.tentonhammer.com/newsletters/wow/mishapsmayhem.gif"
alt="Medeor's Mishaps and Mayhem">

First
I'd like to thank Medawky for stepping in last week to keep the
Overpull torches burning brightly. If it wasn't for that dern
Druid-centric writing, he could be a regular contributor. I can't
stomach too many weeks of listening to Druids though, you know what I
mean? Thanks for stepping in and raising the bar on the journalistic
integrity (now I need to step up my game!).



That reminds me, I don't think I picked on Rogues enough last time.
Name another class that has had the fewest changes while
retaining some
(if not "the") highest DPS in the game. What gives? As ace
reporter I
decided to dig deeper into the story. I copied a decked-out Rogue on
the PTR and went on a killing spree. Maybe I was doing something wrong,
but everything in the zone didn't fall down dead at my approach. I had
to use stealth, locational attacks and tactics while hitting the right
keys. All very silly, so I went back to face-rolling fun on my
Ret-Pally. The idea of trying to get behind the target is all just too
much. I don't get off the couch very often, and I'm not going to bother
with where I stand when I do.



Truer words have never been spoken. Ghostcrawler is quite prolific in
the forums. He spends time answering questions with both narrative
flair and even uses math sometimes. When pressed about class balance
and the overly-used term "bring the player not the class" 'Crawler
responded with a well thought out response and ended with, " class="blue"> href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15443190965&sid=1&pageNo=6#108">If
you're looking for that one thing that's going to
get you a raid spot, I'd shoot for a reputation that you know what the
blank you're doing and some good friends."
People
will put up with a player who players poorly if they like them as a
person, but not the other way around. I've seen the best in class get
kicked to the curb because of their lack of social graces. Be a good
person and people will be good to you, or they'll camp your corpse
because you're an easy HK.



One area of the game that we've addressed in previous Overpulls is the
ease of the game. There is a poll up in our forums href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=44401">asking
whether or not this is a good thing.
I voted that easing the game is a good idea, but I believe Blizzard's
acceleration of those changes might be another matter. For the first
time that I can recall (outside of the launch of an expansion) people
are telling me that they don't want to run instances/dungeons because
they see it as a waste of effort. The comment is generally "why bother
when an hour spent now is worth five minutes after the patch?" I don't
know if I whole-heartedly share that opinion, but I have noticed a lot
less people logging in on my servers lately. Here's to hoping
this is
just the summer doldrums and once everyone comes back from summer break
we'll be stocked with refreshed raiders.



It's another week of travel for this road warrior, but you can always href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=44487">find
me on the forums to discuss
pressing issues like how awesome Paladins are now.



Have a great week, and thanks for reading.



-Jay "Medeor" Johnson





href="http://wow.tentonhammer.com/">