Welcome
to The
Overpull, Ten Ton Hammer's weekly newsletter that discusses all things
WoW.

 

style="width: 250px; height: 50px;"
src="http://images.tentonhammer.com/newsletters/wow/farmwipe.gif"
alt="Now on Farm or That's a Wipe">

Tinfoil
Hats are tingling everywhere this week.



The same week that Champions Online goes live and NCsoft preps the Aion
open beta, Blizzard suddenly href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/73774">opens
the door to faction changes.
Both a blessing and a curse, I was finally able to move some characters
around but at $55 each for the faction and realm changes, it still
stings.



In a hallelujah moment, we can all praise the advancements to the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74033">instance
capacity solution(s).
The jury is still out on the whole LFG cross-server option, but if it
fixes the dern "can't start another instance" problem, then I already
love it.



From the nobody goes to France file, TCG has canceled the Darkmoon
Faire that was scheduled to take place. Fear not European WoW card
flingers; the Amsterdam event is holding strong. Those of us on this
side of the Atlantic can still stop in for events at Austin and Las
Vegas. I don't seem to have local buddies that play the games but when
I do find time for the miniatures game, it is quite fun. The card game
still makes my head hurt though.


 
style="font-weight: bold;">

Blues Clues
 



href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19717481895&pageNo=1&sid=1#4">Race
to change your race.

class="blue">Crygil confirms that Race changes will
be available soon (tm): style="font-style: italic;" class="blue">

" class="blue"> style="font-style: italic;">The Race Change feature
is on the way, but it's not
at a point where we can give you specifics about it yet. As soon as we
feel this feature is close to done, we will give out additional
information on it."



href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19717353372&sid=1">Armor
Penetration can't go away quickly enough:

Ghostcrawler explains why they aren't waiting to nerf Armor Pen:
style="font-style: italic;">
" style="font-style: italic;">Several melee specs (and
Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor
pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being
passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just
this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than
others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not
coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to
do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were
comfortable with."



class="blue"> style="font-style: italic;" class="blue"> class="blue">

 
 

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

Today
marks approximately the 137th anniversary of Labor Day here in the
United States. Chalk this up to yet another great import from Canada,
Labor Day is a celebration of all things worky. We're a little short on
work these days but we never pass up a reason to have a few dozen extra
beers and call it a three day weekend.



The game we call WoW has changed a lot the last few weeks. Some might
say for the better, others lament the decreasing difficulty of the
game.  Our very own Medawky was boasting the other day about
having
eight hours played on one of his fresh level 80s and still
having all
level 200+ gear and none of it crafted. That is both impressive and
depressing. Does the game hold any challenge for players when
gear is
no longer an issue? Are the achievements enough to make for compelling
reasons to log in? I used to think that it was, but my certainty is
wavering.



Even with the ease of gathering loot, there certainly appears to be
another great chasm opening up again between the "easy" runs and the
very difficult instances. The five man heroics are a slam dunk. The ten
player instances are becoming laughable and the 25 player instances
have been brought to their knees. If you disagree, check in on the
forums under the heading "ToC is Teh Fail Blizzard!" and the thousands
of other angry posts. 



Where will Onyxia line up? That will be interesting. The loot tables
are flowing forth from the PTR and there are some very impressive
pieces of iLevel 232 and 245 gear - in addition to the "Head of Onyxia"
of course. My guess is that Blizzard is tiring of the cream puff
instances and will ratchet some of these last of instances up to 11 to
really test the mettle of the players. I know I would if I were them.
I'd name one of the bosses "QuelQeuue Extremis" and have him hit for
50k in an AoE of 100 yards in 3 second pulses. I haven't received an
email from the instance design group from Blizzard, that's odd.

My wallet is the
one that says href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZJlUijGKL._SL500_AA280_.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pulp-Fiction-Bad-Mother-Wallet/dp/B000OY0KV6&usg=__80Nfx80UuJqkusMAd98dOgOeLsU=&h=280&w=280&sz=14&hl=en&start=21&sig2=gerjAUvwlCiXWqrDhpiCew&um=1&tbnid=tykIa_3L0s-RRM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=114&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwallet%2Bsays%2Bbad%2Bmother%2Bf%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20%26um%3D1&ei=OtClSqDTA566sgP70unpCw">bad
mutha trucker.

style="width: 175px; height: 142px;" alt="Bad Mo"
src="/image/view/74123">



Last week href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45846">Xerin
led a lively debate
in the forums after starting with the line "No one in WoW is a good
person." I immediately got pissed and then realized that I'm exactly
who is he talking about. Not a good sign, and to my relief not really
the point of his post. The point is we all submerge ourselves into a
virtual game where we take credit for slaughtering hundreds (if not
thousands) of other virtual living things. We torture some and others
we abandon. Most of them had it coming so I don't feel so bad, but
other times I feel a pang of guilt until I roll "Need."



Speaking of Canada, Guam is a real state, right? Or is it a suburb of a
state, you know like Washington DC? I was glad to hear of the Lt.
Governor of Guam, Ray Tenorio, who plays a level 80 Dwarf Priest. All
jokes about the Alliance aside, this is just a first revelation, we're
sure to learn of more as our legions continue to level up in
government. Someday trade negotiations will be decided by a 3v3 arena
match. Knowing our congress we'd end up with an Enhancement Shaman,
Prot Warrior and that damn pacifist Tauren lady who wanders the path in
Stranglethorn Vale.



In other political news, href="http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/09/03/38-studios-boss-schilling-mulls-bid-ted-kennedy039s-senate-seat">Curt
Schilling didn't say near enough "No Way's"
during some questions about running for the recently vacated
congressional seat of Ted Kennedy. Curt has never been one to back down
from a political discussion so he may think about it, but I'd rather he
concentrate on 38 Studios and the game being developed - is it
Copernicus or Galileo? It's been a while since I've seen any updates so
I'm forgetting. Whatever it is, hurry up already. Stop all this
congressional nonsense and show some gameplay footage.



For the lucky ones that made it to href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/pax09">PAX
this weekend, Blizzard was there
showing off more of what we saw at Blizzcon. Meanwhile other games
announced expansions ( href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74016">Pirates
of the Burning Sea) and all
kinds of new information and updates for href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74079">Conan,
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74120">Guild
Wars2 and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74077">Global
Agenda. I still have my hands
full with my newly created faction-changed WoW alts and a bit of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/co">Champions Online.
I'm a tried and true fantasy fan, but Champions scratches an itch I
didn't know I had. This is a tough month for MMO-monogamy with href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion">Aion
right around the corner too. It is not surprising how Blizzard is
pulling all the stops to keep the hook set nice and deeply into our
psyche.



What's on your MMO-mind this week? All things WoW or are you looking
out of the corner of your eye at those *other* games? Do you really
want our Congress to be WoW players? Would we be better off if they
were EVE players? The cut-throat back-stabbing espionage seems more
their style. Are we all bad people because we root for death and
destruction as Xerin says?  href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=46109">Let's
discuss in the forums.



Have a great week, and thanks for reading.



-Jay "Medeor" Johnson





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






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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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