• WoW: Accounts Must be Merged with Battle.net by November 11th
• "Saving Private Ryan" Screenwriter Tapped for Warcraft Movie
• Charge of the Great Dragonflights Stein Added to the Collection
• WoW: Guild Forms Pink Ribbon In Game To Spotlight Breast Cancer Awarness Month
• New Gadgetzan Times is Out!
• WoW: Chinese Servers Back Online

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Emblems of Triumph are now the base emblem (see Blues Clues). That's pretty insane, right? 245 for everyone. I guess that means 245 won't mean a lot anymore, not that it means a lot right now.

In that's a wipe, your WoW account will soon have to be a Battle.net account or else. There is a lot of whining about it, but it takes like 3 seconds. Read on down below for more WoW news.

• Knights of the Ebon Blade Reputation Guide
  Need to know how to rep up with the Ebon Blade? Look no further than here!
• Halls of Stone / Halls of Lightning Achievement Guide
  Need to get those bosses down or figure out the achievements? This article is for you.
• Facerolling is Bad M’kay
  A MUST read!
• Reputation Portal
• Arena Guide Updated

Blues Clues

• Bornakk tells us about Emblems of Triumph being the base emblems - "The current plan is to make Emblems of Triumph the "base" of emblems so everything that drops Emblems of Conquest would be changed to Triumph and then the new raid content would drop the new highest emblem along with things like the heroic daily and such."

Welcome back to another edition of The Overpull with your host David “Xerin” Piner. We’ve got another fun filled Overpull full of delicious and tasty bits of WoW news and discussion. This week we’ve got the new Tier 10 preview out, new PTR notes, insane Tier 10 bonuses, a funny trade chat comment, a hearty question, and Saurfang cleaving his way to your heart.

Here’s the lineup this week

• What’s the Buzz
  This week we’ve got a look at the latest episode of The Guild, addiction in Singapore, Thassarian getting the respect he deserves, a new tower defense game inside of WoW, and Jinx (the swag company) has come out with something pretty cool or newb, up to you what it is.
• PTR Roundup
  Jaina gets a new model, tier 10’s preview is out, a lot of new class boosts, and Blizzard is handing ponies out to everyone.
• It Happened in /trade
• TTH WoW Forum Spotlight
• The Weekly Musing
  This week we ask a simple question: is WoW too generic or does the generic behavior of WoW make it what’s so appealing.
• Loremaster's Corner
  We take a look at Saurfang and his history, why he’s so cool, and how his brother traveled in time to sit and cleave demons all day.
• This Week's Forum Post
  Come join us for discussion this week on the forums!

Things are moving pretty fast in World of Warcraft right now with 3.3 around the corner and the final showdown with his royal pain in the butt Lord Arthas looms ahead. There is some new PTR patchnotes, which we’ll go into down below, and a good bit of community news this week. Let’s dig in.

RED ALERT!! You’ve got until November 11th, 2009 to turn your WoW account into a “battle.net” account!! Hurry and get on this before the due date, since you know no one else will and then everyone is going to rush the servers causing a delay. We’ve got an awesome forum thread describing the process. People are going isane over this on the WoW forums, but who cares I say. If it was a requirement when you registered then no one would care.

We’ve got all the bosses down in every conceivable mode, so we’re not going to be talking about any bosses going down anytime soon and they’re not on the PTR. So what does the community turn to when there isn’t anything to talk about? The stagnant topic of addiction to MMOGs. It appears Singaporean teens that play WoW spend 27 hours a week playing while still sleeping, eating, and doing school. That’s your interesting fact today and a new thing to brag about. “I play more WoW than a Singaporean teenager!” Singapore enforces national service where those teenagers will have to go into service as a conscript for two years after graduating school which makes this a little bit zanier.

In more news from the east, Thassarian will get his own comic from Tokyopop. Tokyopop, famous for bringing such hits as Domo the Manga, Fruits Baskets, Chibi Vampire, and whatever else that sounds wierd also did the Sunwell Trilogy. It introduced a ton of characters that made it into the Sunwell even. They’re going to feature a class by class series, Death Knights first, Mages second, then Shamans or something along those lines. I read the Sunwell manhwa on the plane flight back from Blizzcon ’07 and it was alright. We still have a review of it here.

Hey, want to hear something cool? Someone made a life sized paper Frostmourne which looks freaking awesome. I wish I had that kind of skill. Check it out over at laitz's deviantart page.

The Guild, the popular web mini-series based loosely on WoW, had a new episode that featured a character risking jail time over a guild rivalry. It’s pretty much jumped past campy guild drama to full fledge TV drama. You’ve got a character going to jail, one becoming a ronin (or more correctly, a hobo), one who betrayed everyone, and the queen of the show is still incapable of dealing with any problems. If it wasn’t for her, you would almost assume you were watching Chuck and not The Guild. The forced PG sexual scenes in the latest episode were not to my liking, of course.

There is a new addon out called “Primal Defense”. It’s a tower defense game for WoW. It sure knocks Peggle out of the baseball field, but I’ll be the first to admit that’s not difficult to do. Now if we can only get Plants vs. Zombies in the game then maybe I’ll be 100% happy.

Jinx has a new shirt out! OMG you proclaim, what could it be? I’ll give you a hint. It involves three ______ and a moon and the answer isn’t wolf! That’s right, three worgens and a moon, mocking the three wolves and a moon shirt that’s not very cool, at least in my opinion.

Jaina and Sylvanas got a backstory page on the official site now. Nothing new there to be found out.

In the funny department, someone asked on the WoW forums about Jaina porting Arthas to the Theramore docks. Bornakk responded that Arthas's hearthstone is on a short cooldown.

Finally, the Gadgetzan Times is back. How long will it last before Blizzard scraps it again this year? The latest episode was pretty “meh” to me, but I’m sure if we get the community submissions up then it might be something to look forward to. Is it more, or does the page look like something out of Harry Potter?

What’s new on the PTR this week? Let’s talk Tier 10!

• Rogues look cooler than space Paladins. They get to look like a “geist”, complete with a noose and a geist hat.
• Druids get the same set of gear since tier 1, complete with antlers. This time the antlers have spikes. Queue antler jokes.
• Death Knights… get the same armor they’ve had forever, with more glowy to it.
• Hunters get a HAT WITH A FREAKING BLADE ON IT. New Hunter ability, ENGAGE, slinging the Hunter at you head first with their BLADE HAT.
• Warriors, jealous of Druids and their antlers, now get ram horns and look like characters out of Tron.

In other news, set bonuses are insane as usual but I don’t think they’ll stick in their current form. Blizzard isn’t in the business to give us all ponies and let us ride ‘em too. Think about a hoping Rejuv, 15% damage on Auto-Shot, Tricks healing energy and 3 combo points on finishing moves, and it just rolls from there. They’re getting updated frequently though, so we’ll wait a bit on ‘em.

In non-tier 10 news, Beserking will increase cast speed, Hunters can use “Call Stabled Pet” every 5 minutes, and “Culling of the Herd” is in that gives a 1/2/3% damage boost for the Hunter and the pet if you spec into it. Avoidance is now standard and Vanish is “fixed” again some more, who knows if it’ll stick or if a single person will be happy with it. Blizzard is working on haste for HoTs and DoTs.

Oh, Jaina has a new model. It looks alright, but we don’t really see enough of her for it to be a big deal.

[3. Trade] LFM Black Temple!! PST for invite!!!!!!!!
/w inv plz

Then, after going to the Black Temple, zoning in, and finding Illidan’s room is locked.

[Raid Leader] Everyone plz leave so I can reset the instance.

*facepalm*

ROFL...Tell Me what you think on this!

jmmathe tells us an amazing story of how he was invited into a VoA as a tank and asked if he could roll on ret gear. It so happens that he was given permission to. When some ret gloves dropped and he won them it seems that the ret Paladin tried in every way possible to get the gloves, only to begin losing his temper towards the end. It seems our good friend jammathe "is finished as a wow player" due to this.

How often does that happen to you? You win an item, someone starts begging to buy it from you, and in the end they lose their temper at you. All too frequently to me. I won a Grim Toll once and got an offer of 1,000 gold and when I refused the person just started spamming me. I guess that's what /ignore is for.

What oh what could this week’s question be:

Do you think WoW’s gameplay is too generic and needs to progress the genre more or are you quite happy with how it works out? Obviously, if you’re a subscriber, you’re happy right now, but do you want something more and do you think it’d be an improvement?

I ask this question because I recently picked up Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim where you take on the role of a king and make heroes. These heroes are completely autonomous, but you can make quests (more like bribes) to get them to go somewhere and do something. I loved Majesty the first one, so this was a no brainer. As I played through the levels, weeping at times due to the difficulty in some levels, I realized more and more that the characters and cliché world are how we play WoW.

A better example would be Final Fantasy Cyrstal Chronicles: My Life as a King or FINAL FANTASY, THE SPIRITS WITHIN, CRYSTAL CHRONICALS, AWESOME GAME FINAL FANTASY: NOT FINAL FANTASY AT ALL EXCEPT FOR THE ART. Not that I’m bitter it’s not a Final Fantasy game; I just love how they abuse the IP is all. Anyway, same premise, worse U.I., and nowhere near as funny. You also don’t get to see the heroes beat up on stuff, but they progress in a similar manner dungeon to dungeon.

Blizzard builds the guild halls and we make the characters. They set up marketplaces and we buy our stuff. We go out and do missions and quests, returning once in awhile to rest up, until we take on the big monster in the end. Once he’s down, thanks to help of our party, we continue our journey on the next map where a new big monster awaits.

It’s humorous to me that Majesty was developer while EverQ uest came out back in 2000. It played on almost every RPG cliché out there. In this sense, a game from 9 years ago can teach us a lot. That there is a simple formula and we’ve been following it since Dungeon in 1975 (which ran on massive mainframes back then) and Akalabeth: World of Doom by Richard Garriott which was the precursor to the Ultima series. Even Roguelikes, like Rogue or dungeon crawlers like Wizardry followed the same, simple formula, all of it coming from Dungeons & Dragons.

Here we are today, doing the same thing at same bat time and same bat channel. Sure we’ve got airships, thanks to Final Fantasy I for making them a RPG staple and a barrel full of character tropes to enjoy, but it’s all pretty much still the same.

I think we should be a little bit more progressive and offer something more than the standard equation. Maybe not The Last Remnant where it’s really hard to do anything because the combat system is so revolutionary that people like me get lost and put it down. Something like The World Ends with You where the combat and overall gameplay feel progressive for the genre but still remains understandable and easy to use.

Then again, think about all of the MMOGs that try to offer something “more” than what’s been offered for the longest time and where they’ve gone. Auto Assault tanked into the ground. Earth & Beyond isn’t even known of anymore. Have you ever heard of it? Probably not. That’s how bad it tanked. EVE Online is doing well, but it’s not anything close to an RPG. It’s more of an online spreadsheet mixed with Progress Quest and some epic space fights here and there.

I personally would love if Path of the Titans plays out to add some unique character customization that’s more than go here, there, and back to level up/gain ability. I’d like if we’d have some sections of the game where something new or cool was done that was more than vehicles or something someone else has done. Heck, throw me an RTS engine and let me play my character in an RTS setting for some quests or something. It’s not going to happen and I’ll be happy even if it doesn’t, but I’d like to see something cool!

What are your thoughts? Join us on the forum and let us know! Be sure to throw in your ideas for what you’d like to see that’d be neat or cool.

Last week we focused on Team Rocket from Pokem- excuse me, I mean his great and awesome Arthas, the Lich King, and summoner of an endless supply of generic undead to level up on. If only the advisor from The Legend of Neil had his way and Arthas put a few level 80 mobs in the newbie areas. We’d no longer have to worry about those pesky heroes eh?

Well, this week let’s talk about Master of Cleaves, Varok Saurfang.

Saurfang is the master of cleave and kicking butt. He can cleave, if you crit him he’ll just intercept you, and has been known to wipe entire raids with absolute ease. He’s a legend and a pop icon of the Horde. He’s coming around in Icecrown to say hello. Who exactly is he? Well, let’s take a little history lesson.

Saurfang was the quest turn-in for the head of Onyxia and Nefarion. He took their heads, shoved ‘em on pikes, and sat in Orgrimmar chillaxing. He has a secret. That secret was that he was perhaps the strongest NPC in the game. He had an ability called “Saurfang’s Rage” where if you crit him he’d insta-kill you unless you had Shieldwall up, but that’s not going to last forever. He wiped entire raids in seconds. He’d intercept around just destroying everyone. That’s why you had to use the backdoor to get into Orgrimmar to kill Thrall. Thrall is nothing to this guy ’s prowess in the game.

He also showed up in AQ40 and took down hordes of enemies like they were nothing. He gives a cool speech too, mentioning Broxigar who is his brother. Now, let’s just talk about Broxigar real quick.

Broxigar was in the first, second, and third war. Then he traveled back in time with Rhonin and Krasus (that dude in Wyrmrest Temple) where he gets thrown in jail, broken out by Tyrande, and then helps in the final battle of the Well of Eternity. There he jumps through the well to where the Burning Legion was and starts cleaving. He keeps cleaving until there is a mountain of dead demons. He makes Sargeras mad and cleaves Sargeras, wounding his leg (and is the only person so far to even touch Sargeras). Sargeras kills him, hops out of the portal, and gets sent back thanks to that wound in his leg. Saurfang's brother saved Azeroth and killed about a billion demons with his cleave.

You’d have to think that a time traveling orc in four of the most important wars was pretty tough right?

Anyway, Saurfang gets pretty mad at Garrosh. Saurfang drank some of that kool-aid the other orcs drank and knows what rage is all about. He goes to Northrend with Garrosh and sits there talking to him endlessly. In a quest that the Horde does he runs over disguised to this super powerful necromancer. The necromancer spawns a ton of adds. Saurfang doesn’t even blink, and cleaves EVERYTHING down including the dude. He then slowly walks back, like it was nothing.

Saurfang then went and comforted Thrall when he was feeling down in the Undercity. Now he’s going to be on the Orgrim Hammer when you battle the Alliance. I can imagine it now:

[Saurfang] MOVE ME CLOSER
[Korm Blackscar] aye aye
*Saurfang cleaves The Skybreaker in half*
[Saurfang] That is how it is done.

Anyway, he’s pretty awesome.  His son will probably be shoved in Bolvar’s body or something. Oh, his son went and faced Arthas face to face and got his soul stolen. Pretty lame, right? Consider the fact that he was the first to charge up to Arthas and shove his axe in his face, I wouldn’t think so.

That’s the lore corner this week and concludes The Overpull. Stay tuned next week for more awesome news, funny stories, lore, and questions rolled together in your ultimate WoW newsletter.

-David "Xerin" Piner