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Zach enjoys PvP in all its forms, but the form through which he enjoys it most is the winning form.

Today we’ll continue our handy guide to winning at everything. By “everything,” I mean PvP encounters, and by “winning” I mean as close an approximation as you can get to not embarrassing yourself. Last week, we talked about the absolute basics of heading into battle, which starts with your machine and your internet connection. For a lot of hardcore PvP players, these are investments as much as athletes or hobbyists would invest in sports equipment like better bicycle parts or top-of-the-line running shoes. They won’t make you win, but as with all tools, they’ll give you the edge with all other things being even.

Sometimes, distance can be a limitation when it comes to our connection, although there are ways to compensate for that. One of these methods is SSH tunneling, which in a nutshell carries your World of Warcraft data on the express lane, while normal connections are on the freeway on which everyone else has to contend with traffic. It’s like knowing the shortest route to a destination, while normal routes force you to contend with longer roads, more turns and more stoplights. The technical explanation is more complex than that, but what this basically does is lower your latency — sometimes by as much as several hundred milliseconds, which in PvP translates to landing that killing blow before your opponent does. There are several paid services that provide tunneling, such as Gamepath or Lowerping, and I know of a lot of players outside the United States who use these services to achieve better response times in the game.

Continue reading The Art of War(craft): A handy guide to winning at everything, part 2

Filed under: PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

The Art of War(craft): A handy guide to winning at everything, part 2 originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zach enjoys PvP in all its forms, thus celebrating when some form of PvP was introduced to the Facebook game Pirates Ahoy!

Let’s continue from last week’s handy guide which was titled intentionally to play on the various meanings of “good.” This week, we’ll go through a few pointers at how to win at everything. Or, at the very least, to put up a decent fight and not go down in a terribly embarrassing fashion. That’s all one can really ask for — that one puts up a fight. Note that in most cases, the victor won’t care because a win is a win, especially in PvP. There are no moral victories in PvP, but there are educational defeats. If you’re going to lose, at the very least learn from it, right?

The first rule to winning is to think you can win. If you don’t give yourself a chance to win by thinking you’re outmatched, then unless your opponent is a total buffoon, she’s already won. Don’t worry too much about class or your level differential. You must go into the battle thinking you can win or, if you’re a healer, at least survive indefinitely. It doesn’t matter if you can actually win or not, especially when you’re clearly outmatched, such as when you’re many levels below your opponent. In such cases, your opponents already expect to win, so if you surprise them with some resistance or maybe even bring them dangerously low, then you will have put some doubt into their heads. As I mentioned last week, most griefers don’t actually look for a challenge. So there, the most important rule: Believe you can win.

Continue reading The Art of War(craft): A handy guide to winning at everything

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

The Art of War(craft): A handy guide to winning at everything originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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World of Warcraft subscribers on older Mac hardware will soon be left with no choice but to upgrade to a new system or give up the game for good. Blizzard announced on its official forums over the weekend that an upcoming patch will disable support for World of Warcraft on Power PC-equipped Macs.

“Apple has been focusing on Intel Macs since the end of 2005,” notes a Blizzard poster on the forums. “So since 5 years, PPC systems has received very few bug fixes. It is now too hard to deal with all the bugs and the lack of features to support the few PPC users that we have left.”

Following the pre-Cataclysm update, anyone with a Power PC machine will be greeted with an error message when attempting to run the game. Blizzard points out that StarCraft 2 also lacks Power PC support, as will Diablo III.

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Filed under: News items, Arts and Crafts

J!NX unveils fall 2010 World of Warcraft t-shirts originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zach brings you the weekly column The Art of War(craft), in which he talks about good, old-fashioned PvP.

Changes in the beta are fast and furious. There’s practically a new build every week, just about whenever the live realms go on maintenance, sometimes even sooner. While a lot of the things in the beta are subject to change, we’re beginning to see some things that will probably stick. By now, big changes like the new soul shard mechanic, hunter focus and even the new paladin holy power system are probably locks to go live. For today, we’ll take a look at a bunch of things all over the beta that will likely contribute to the PvP experience come Cataclysm.

Some of those other few things that will probably make it live are the worgen and goblin racials, which we can view as templates for the new batch of racial abilities. The developers mentioned that they’ll be handing out new racial abilities to bring the rest of the races up to speed compared to the worgen and goblins. Some of the abilities won’t have PvP applications, but other passives will contribute to some degree, such as Viciousness and Aberration for worgen. But a few active abilities jump out as exceptionally useful — and fun — for PvP, such as Rocket Barrage and Rocket Jump for goblins and Darkflight for worgen.

Continue reading The Art of War(craft): Random thoughts on Cataclysm PvP

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

The Art of War(craft): Random thoughts on Cataclysm PvP originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve said it before, but low level PvP is going to be insanely fun come Cataclysm. It will be so much fun, in fact, that it will almost be worth rolling alts for and maybe even turning off XP gains to stay in the lower brackets just a while longer. The big change is because of the bonus abilities players gain when choosing a tree to specialize in. Although every character gets one big, signature spell, they are bundled with complementary abilities or skills that define the spec.

When I first reviewed the initial talent overhaul, the developers hadn’t settled on exactly what abilities to give to classes at level 10. Several builds into the beta, we have a better picture of how the various specs will look, and it’s not very likely that these will change much when the game goes live, considering that each spec basically revolves around these core abilities. For the purposes of this post, we’ll take a look at the first two battleground brackets — 10-19 and 20-29 — mostly because characters get talent points every other level now, so these two brackets should cover the first two tiers of each tree. We’ll try to be general for now because everything is in such flux, so expect a few errors as abilities get moved around from one beta iteration to the next.

Continue reading The Art of War(Craft): Low level PvP in Cataclysm

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

The Art of War(Craft): Low level PvP in Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Video, Events, in-game, Previews

It’s 9 PM on Thursday, folks! That means it’s time for me to jump into the closed beta of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and let you guys guide me around the zones!

Yes, that’s right, I’ll be looking for your input on this hour and a half tour of the new Azeroth! To interact with me, simply take advantage of Livestream’s chat function, located right below the streaming video in our green Livestream widget, or pull out your Twitterscope and tweet the hashtag #MassiveCataclysm with where you want me to go!

Stuck at work, but have an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone on you? Worry not, as you can access our mobile Livestream by visiting http://www.livestream.com/massivelytv in your phone! How cool is that?!

So sit back and enjoy the ride, readers! I look forward to talking with you all as I fly around on my snow white gryphon! If you want to start watching the stream, simply hit the continue reading button to find the stream after the jump!

[Update: Thanks for coming, everyone! We had over 200+ viewers! Thank you for your great support, and look forward to more special events in the future! If you want to see the Cataclysm tour, where we checked out Kalimdor and the Worgen starting area, check our video on demand on http://www.livestream.com/massivelytv]

Continue reading Watch a stream of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm live, right here, right now! [Updated]

Watch a stream of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm live, right here, right now! [Updated] originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s 9 PM on Thursday, folks! That means it’s time for me to jump into the closed beta of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and let you guys guide me around the zones!

Yes, that’s right, I’ll be looking for your input on this hour and a half tour of the new Azeroth! To interact with me, simply take advantage of Livestream’s chat function, located right below the streaming video in our green Livestream widget, or pull out your Twitterscope and tweet the hashtag #MassiveCataclysm with where you want me to go!

Stuck at work, but have an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone on you? Worry not, as you can access our mobile Livestream by visiting http://www.livestream.com/massivelytv in your phone! How cool is that?!

So sit back and enjoy the ride, readers! I look forward to talking with you all as I fly around on my snow white gryphon! If you want to start watching the stream, simply hit the continue reading button to find the stream after the jump!

Continue reading Watch a stream of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm live, right here, right now!

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Video, Events, in-game, Previews

Watch a stream of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm live, right here, right now! originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now at 75% payout! One of the most established guide’s available, 3 years running. Completely updated for patch 3.3.5 resulting in insanely high conversions + low returns. Make up to $48 per sale!
Zuggys Gold Mastery Guide – Top World of Warcraft Gold Guide

Zach sees everything through the PvP perspective of The Art of War(craft), including homemade cookies baked by his supremely awesome and sexy baker wife. He sees the brownies as opponents that need to be devoured in a methodical, strategic and soul-crushing manner. He advises everyone to look at all things (especially food) as adversaries that must be defeated and guarantees that success in life will follow. Probably.

Let’s face it. Right now, if you’re a regular reader of WoW.com, we’re in some sort of holding pattern and the biggest thing that interests us about the game is what’s going on in the Cataclysm beta. It’s still far too early to settle on any talent builds, but who can resist playing with those talent calculators, right? Certainly not me. The beta changes so rapidly, though, that it would be foolish to write anything without the proper caveat that the final product is likely going to be much different.

One thing that’s likely to stay the same throughout beta, however, is the ravaged landscape of Azeroth. This should create some interesting possibilities for world PvP. The biggest change is that the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will become flyable. It will become harder and far more dangerous to level as players must now not only watch their literal backs but also look skyward for potential griefers. On PvP servers, this makes it a far more dangerous and exciting world.

Continue reading The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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