China will grow larger. And the larger they grow, so do the niche markets they serve. Currently under construction in the Wunjin District is a video gaming theme park with World of Warcraft and Starcraft as the most recognizable crowning gems. The park will open this coming March 2011, bringing in more reason for us to go visit Asia.

Now we’re not quite sure if this is an official partnership, as the logos and the overall name of the park “World of Joyland” don’t look too authentic. But yeah, we will find out in a couple of weeks!

[Park Website | Source]

[Side note: It feels odd not to include a game from either Kinect or PlayStation Move on this list -- both motion controllers garnered probably more attention than anything else in gaming this year -- but this is a list of games, not hardware. And neither device has yet to have that one, defining game that realizes the hardware's full potential.]

Mass Effect 2

It’s hard to believe it’s been less than a year since Mass Effect 2 was released — particularly since Mass Effect 3 was just announced a few weeks ago. The developers behind RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic set out to create an entirely new scifi universe and mythology, and they created sophisticated new technology to make a role-playing game that would unfold smoothly, realistically, and without the awkward pauses the genre is known for. The groundwork for BioWare’s ambitious trilogy was laid in the series’ first game, but ME2 honed to perfection every last detail of the overall package. Mass Effect 2 was the perfect blend of first-rate science fiction, cinematic visuals and thrills, and finely-tuned gameplay. And for the earliest months of 2010, it was all anyone could talk about.

Heavy Rain

A game like no other, Heavy Rain took full advantage of the heavy-duty hardware offered by the PlayStation 3 to deliver a dark, moody experience with all the gravitas of a film noir masterpiece. Consider it the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure, with four protagonists to play through — and any or all of them can die at any time. Heavy Rain brought mature themes to an incredibly mature game that could foreshadow the future of gaming: a place where the emotional power of film is indistinguishable from what a game can do.

Red Dead Redemption

Bloody, Old West revenge. Impeccable game design. An epic, open world from Rockstar Games — the masters of the genre. This is what happens when you combine a powerful story with game developers who are at the peak of their craft. Those devs poured rich visuals, gorgeous music, and terrific acting into a game that’s one of the few bona fide games that’s justifiable at its $60 pricetag.

APB: All Points Bulletin

Perhaps the most unfortunate entry on this list, APB held endless potential — the pitch was “Grand Theft Auto as a MMO” — but it was so poorly received, developer Realtime Worlds was forced to pull the plug less than 100 days after it launched, due to lack of funding. Realtime even employed some of the most creative marketing tactics ever used for a video game, but the experience was simply too unfulfilling. It’s since been snatched up by K2 Network and is planned to relaunch sometime in 2011 as a free-to-play MMO, but it’s doubtful anyone has their hopes up. On the flip side, lowering expectations can often work in one’s favor, so maybe 2011 will be kinder to APB than 2010 was.

Minecraft

For many, there can be no doubt that 2010 was the year of Minecraft. Seriously, did a single day go by when somebody out there wasn’t writing about, talking about, or posting videos of their Minecraft creations? The game isn’t even finished yet, but the Alpha build (which released in June, followed by the Beta just weeks ago) ate up so much of players’ time that even major game studios famously confessed to having “succumbed to Minecraft addiction.” If you’re among the three gamers left on the planet who’ve never heard of Minecraft, it’s sort of a LEGO-inspired sandbox game where literally anything can be built, and player survival is based on the ingenuity of your creations when in-game monsters come calling. Minecraft proved to be that rare, magical combination of familiar elements and original gameplay mechanics. Not bad for a game made up of low-res textures and big, pixelated blocks.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

If somebody tells you the RTS genre is dead because of its virtual absence on consoles, point that depraved soul in the direction of the three million PC and Mac gamers who purchased StarCraft II in just its first month of sales. Fans who lamented the excruciatingly long wait for this sequel were overjoyed to find that their patience paid off, as Blizzard rewarded them with a potent storyline, slick production values, and beautifully streamlined gameplay that emphasized multiplayer. Above all else, StarCraft II‘s success is a beacon declaring that in the age of the console, both real-time strategy games and PC gaming itself are far from dead.

Halo: Reach

Microsoft’s flagship franchise was impossible to avoid in 2010, whether you’re an enthusiast or not — primarily because of the exorbitant (and at times, bizarre) marketing dollars that Microsoft threw around to promote Halo: Reach. All that money spent paid off, with universally-positive reviews and a fan reception that bordered on mushy/happy nostalgia. Which is exactly what Bungie was going for in its final opus from the scifi universe it created. Bungie’s departure from Halo doesn’t mean the series is over; Microsoft owns the franchise lock, stock, & barrel, so you can bet you’ll be back in Master Chief’s boots before long. But you can also bet that out-Bungie-ing Bungie is going to be one tall order, thanks to Reach‘s near-perfect execution.

Medal of Honor

Meant to be EA’s big competitor against the unstoppable juggernaut that is Call of Duty, this reboot of the Medal of Honor series was big on ambition, but even bigger on controversy. Thus it makes a dubious entry on this list because of its one aspect that no one could stop talking about: it allows you to play as the Taliban. Sure, EA gave the game an 11th-hour patch that changed all mentions of “Taliban” in the game to the cowardly generic term “Opposing Force.” But the damage was already done. It got decent reviews (it’s got a 72 rating on Metacritic), but the public at large couldn’t get past the Taliban flap, granting the game nowhere near the sales numbers EA was hoping for. There’s always next time.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Every bit as riveting as the white-knuckling gameplay was the behind-the-scenes drama that unfolded between publisher Activision and the two heads of Infinity Ward, the studio that originally created Call of Duty. You don’t really need me to retell the story yet again, do you? It’s well documented all over the industry, and it’s an epic tale for the history books. On top of this, Black Ops developer Treyarch had the unenviable task of releasing the franchise’s next game after the IW fallout, with the impossible levels of fan scrutiny that would accompany it. Fortunately, the game lived up to the hype and went on to rake in more than $1 billion from rabid gamers.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

The word “bold” seems inadequate to describe this world-shattering expansion pack for World of Warcraft. With six years of gameplay under its belt, WoW was in danger of stagnation despite its legions of players, so Blizzard decided to do the unthinkable: shake up the entire game. Cataclysm takes the world of WoW and reshapes it entirely, not just altering the storyline’s status quo but all aspects of the gameplay itself. Change never comes with universal appreciation, but Cataclysm was one of the savviest moves Blizzard could have made, and it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Alright, so there’s my list. Let me hear it, gamers: what did I leave out? What should have been included? (Be sure to do your homework before mentioning a game you loved to talk about in 2010… that actually released in 2009.) Final Fantasy XIII? Bad Company 2? Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood? Super Meat Boy? Rock Band 3? Super Mario Galaxy 2? Epic Mickey? LEGO Universe? And what about handheld games? iPhone and iPad games? Or even Facebook games?

What games did you spend all of your time talking about this year?

This is it guys. If you want to be eligible as a potential candidate for the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm closed beta, make sure your opt-ins are all set-up and updated!

How to Opt-In for Cataclysm closed beta:

1. Have a World of Warcraft license attached to your Battle.net account. Meaning, you MUST have a World of Warcraft account.
2. Upload your current system specifications to Battle.net. You will need to download and run the beta opt-in application to update your system specifications.
3. Check “Warcraft Universe” in the Beta test I’m interested in portion.
4. Click Update preferences.

And that’s it! Let me remind you though, that just because you opted-in doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll get an invite for the Cataclysm beta testing. It just means that you’re expressing your interest to be a beta tester.

Maybe if you cross your fingers and pray hard enough to the geek gods, your prayers will be answered.

Woohoo. Cataclysm Beta testing is almost here. This just means that Cataclysm is commiiiinnngggg!

Hopefully, new screenshot teasers will come out since more people will be play-testing the new expansion. I’m sooo envious of those alpha testers! Unfortunately though, it’s not open to the public and is only available to friends and family of Blizzard employees, hence the name “Cataclysm Friends & Family Alpha”. So if you get any email claiming to give you access to become an alpha, it is most probably a SCAM. Mmmkay?

Any Blizzard employee want to adopt or marry me? Haha.

I have to be honest, I’m really getting bored out of my mind in World of Warcraft at the moment. I haven’t been logging in much, except for our raid times which is around 4 times a week, for around 4 hours a day. That’s 16 hours gameplay total for a week. That used to be my number of hours played in a day, haha!

My other guildmates are getting bored, too so I’m not surprised that they’re not logging on as often as they normally do. Well, that can’t be avoided! This is the lull that happens before an expansion.

Oh, but fortunately for those who are still hopelessly addicted to World of Warcraft and can’t log off, Children’s Week is up! Going around and touring Azeroth orphans will probably entertain you for a day, and multiply that by how many alts you have, you’ll have enough to do for a week.

But that’s given that you haven’t done Children’s Week last year, because if you did Children’s Week last year, the quest line in Dalaran does not reset so that means you won’t be able to complete Children’s Week this year. Sucks!

Anyway, here are more Cataclysm screenshots I found all over the internet. Nothing too great, but I’m mildly intrigued by the screenshots of the dark, rainy towns. I wonder if those are the starting areas of the Worgen class?

News about the changes in the raiding system came out last Monday and a lot of my guild mates started shouting, “The sky is falling!” causing a bit of uncertainty in our guild come Cataclysm.

In a nutshell, Blizzard is planning to implement the following changes to the raid system when the expansion comes along:

• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will share the same lockout.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids difficulty will be as close as possible to each other.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will drop the exact same loot, but 25-man will drop a higher quantity of items.
• Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel
• For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid.

My guild is a casual raiding guild (with around 20-30 regular raiders) so news of having a single lockout for both the 10 and 25 player modes came as a shock. Even though we have regular 25-man raids during weekends, we have 2 10-man raids that are very important to our raid progression, as well.

Our 10-man raids serve as venue for us to be familiar with the fights, and of course to get gear so we can be ready for the 25 man raids. The 10 man raids definitely make our lives easier since the only thing we have to worry about is the group synergy, since we already have the gear and the experience.

Basically, with the new changes, if you want to do both 10 and 25 man raid in a single week, you will need to do so on two different toons.

And for a casual raiding guild, that definitely poses a problem as not everyone has time to actually level up and gear 2 different toons so early in the expansion.

I’m sure though that the hardcore players and guilds out there are rejoicing, like, “FINALLY, we get to be L33T again!” I have to admit, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion was definitely casual-player friendly. Too casual-friendly, I think! So even though the new Cataclysm changes are appearing to be a bit hard on casual players, I personally think Blizzard is just balancing it all out for the hard-core players, too.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after 5 years of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard is definitely an expert when it comes to game balance.

Four years later, I have two level 80 Priests (Undead and a Blood Elf, I re-rolled to a BE because I wanted a prettier toon and race change wasn’t available yet, hehe), a level 80 Blood Elf Paladin, a level 80 Tauren Druid, and a Blood Elf Hunter that is stuck at level 77 plainly because I’m too sick and tired to level her up.

Suffice to say, with those many Horde alts, I pretty much have all the Horde quests memorized to a ‘T’, and I will probably jump of a cliff if I have to go thru the Wrath of the Lich King quest for the Horde side AGAIN for the nth time.

However, since things are becoming slightly boring and routinary in WoW, with people just waiting for the Cataclysm Expansion, the only thing to spice up your WoW life is to level another alt. But since the thought of leveling another horde makes me want to puke, I had this great idea of leveling up an Alliance toon!

Hence the birth of Zeexie, my pretty Draenei Shaman! I’ll eventually transfer her to Horde when I reach level 80, though. But for now, I’m appreciating the Alliance scenery and slowly enjoying leveling her to 80.

Some thoughts about playing for the Alliance side:

1. Alliance player aren’t all the bad. I had this misconception that Alliance had more annoying players since there was this misnomer that more kids play Alliance. I’ve beginning to think that’s not entirely true ever since Horde got the Blood Elf race and all the kids transferred to Horde side. So far, the Alliance Trade Chat has been quite friendly and actually made more sense than Horde Trade Chat.

2. Blizzard definitely spent more time on designing major Alliance towns. I don’t know if its the novelty of a new experience, but I personally think that Alliance towns are waaaaay prettier than Horde towns. Definitely way bigger, too. And I don’t know about you, but the mere fact that Alliance has the Tram trumps any mode of Horde transportation! I’m so envious! Horde zeppelins are cool, but I prefer the pretty Alliance boats.

3. Gnome and Dwarf Tanks are annoying. They’re just so tiny!

4. The prices for items in Alliance Auction House seem to be cheaper. Probably because there are more Alliance players? More supply, so cheaper prices?

So far, that’s my life as an Alliance player! I still yet have to fully experience being an Alliance, like in PVP and in raiding so I can’t really say I’m an expert on Alliance life yet. But so far, I’m having a great time.

How about you? Have you ever switched from Horde to Alliance, or vice versa? Which “community” did you like more?

But before I found out that there was a loading screen bug, I thought my add ons were the culprit for the slow loading time. Currently,  I have the following add ons installed:

• Atlasloot Enhanced
• Auctioneer
• Deadly Boss Mods
• Decursive
• GearScore
• Mik Scrolling Battle Text
• Omen Threat Meter
• Rating Buster
• Titan Panel
• X-Perl Unit Frames

I was so annoyed the other day that I actually considered just uninstalling all my add ons, or maybe at least trim it down to let’s say, 5 add ons max. You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to decide which 5 add ons to keep!

The following would be my Top 5 Add ons for WoW:

• Deadly Boss Mods – definitely a must if you are a serious and hard core raider. Deadly Boss Mods has come a long way since it also has warnings for 5 man dungeons now.
• Decursive – if you are healer, or a class with a decursing ability (like mages), this is also a mandatory add on to have. From the name itself, it will make decursing a piece of cake.
• Titan Panel – being the obsessive person that I am, Titan Panel helps me see all the information about my characters in a glance, from my money to the durability of my armor.
• Omen Threat Meter – While this is a useless add on for a healer class, it is definitely a must for tanks and dps classes.
• X-Perl Unit Frames – I definitely think it is a must to have a unit frame add on (especially for healers), and my choice would be X-Perl Unit Frames. I guess I like how it was designed since it makes it easier for me to see which people are getting damaged and those who are needing heals. There are however better unit frame add ons out there, like PitBull and Grid.

If WoW had an add on limit, what 5 add ons would you install?

First and foremost though, if you don’t know what GearScore is, it is an add on that allows you to gauge a player’s gear level. It removes the need to manually inspect a player’s gear by clicking on him and checking out his gear, or by alt-tabbing and checking out the WoW armory.

All you have to do is mouseover a player in the game and it will scan and calculate the player’s gear level and show you the player’s gearscore via a tooltip

At first, I found it to be a really great add on since I used it in gauging myself. I was able to see how much better geared I became every week. Basically, it was mostly for self satisfaction.

But lately, ever since it became popular, more and more people are taking gear scores  a little too seriously, to the point that it’s not even funny anymore.

Imagine being kicked out of a Forge of Souls (FoS) dungeon simply because you have less than 5000 gear score. I know that maybe a little extreme, but yup, it HAS happened to me before! Imagine getting kicked out in the middle of the run, and you’ve already been saved to the instance! I wanted to scream and pull my hair out since I wait for 15 minutes to get queued and I end up getting prematurely kicked out of the run.

Just because you have low gear score doesn’t automatically mean you’re a noobie. I’ve seen a lot of people with extremely high gear score do poorly compared to a toon with a lesser gear score when it comes to the damage or healing meters.

Admittedly, I’m guilty of being too discriminating when it comes to gear score sometimes. Like last night for example, at Pit of Saron. There was this druid tank who had 3000 gear score. I wanted to kick him out because I thought his gear was pretty low. But lo and behold, I was pleasantly surprised to see he could hold aggro pretty well! He a very good tank given that he was under geared. The healer was working overtime though to keep him up since his health points were pretty low but we still were able to clear instance with no wipes. Just proves that gear isn’t everything.

So to those who are very discriminating when it comes to GearScore, I think you should take other things (like damage and healing meter performance) into consideration first before judging that someone is a noob simply because of his low gear score. Probably when it comes to major runs like 25-man Ice Crown Citadel, it is okay to be critical, but when you are just running 5 man heroic instances, omigod, just relax!

Probably one of the biggest change that is going to happen when the Cataclysm expansion comes out is the implementation of the Mastery Stat System.

For those who have been stuck in-game and have not even browsed the internet about the upcoming expansion, Blizzard is bringing in the Mastery System, a set of new game mechanics that will allow players to make their chosen talent trees more unique.

Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree — meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear. – MMO-Champion

Pretty interesting, I must say. I believe it’s going to make gameplay a whole lot more interesting and fun. The Mastery Stat System will allow similar specced toons to become better in different things and to be played differently. It actually reminds me of the days of Vanilla WoW.

I remember the days when it took 2-3 different priests to buff the whole raid. Not because buffs then we’re given per party, but it was because some priests had better or more improved Power Word: Fortitude. Same with Divine Spirit. Back then, you really had to sacrifice whether you want to be a better healer, or contribute more to raid by giving better buffs. You really had to think about how you want to spend your talent points. Back then, you can really feel and see the difference between a Discipline priest and a Holy priest.
Nowadays, I feel like the classes are too “all-around”, if you know what I mean. If you gear similarly-skilled players with the same level or kind of gear, they will more or less perform the same during raids. For me, there’s no sense of uniqueness and that’s what I missed during the days of Vanilla WoW.

It’s like the game is getting too “formulated” and strategies for killing a boss are getting too linear.

I remember the days when not all rogues can sap mobs because a rogue may or may not have Improved Sap. It definitely made the game more fun to play since you had to think of different strats. The proposed Mastery Stat doesn’t exactly work that way but I think it’s definitely going to promote diversity when it comes to developing your toons and they way you play them.

Well, that’s my ‘initial’ rambling and understanding about the Mastery Stat System. There’s actually no definite explanation on how the Mastery System exactly works, so we can only muse and speculate the moment.

[ Image via MMO-Champion ]

As of this writing, I am currently at 1.75MB of 77.3MB of Patch 3.3.3. Still a long way to go! If you’re on the same boat as I am and you’re noticing that your download is a bit slow, don’t panic, fellow WoW geeks. The patch download is only for preparation when WoW 3.3.3 actually goes live, which will probably happen in a couple of weeks. Like maybe next week, or next next week, or next next next week. I can’t really give a definite schedule since even Blizzard itself hasn’t given a specific date on when it’s going live. But at least we know Patch 3.3.3 really does exist! (Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus!)

Here are some of the few things we can expect from Patch 3.3.3:
PVP

• Increased Honor for an Honorable Kill for characters of all levels.
• Random Battleground system. Quite similar to the LFG system for dungeons and pretty much works the same way. No more Daily Battleground quests as well. Instead, you get bonus rewards for choosing the Random Battleground option

Dungeons and Raids

• Players can FINALLY skip initial introduction in Culling of Stratholme as long as you’ve completed it at least once. (Thank the geek gods! Good bye Arthas babblings!)
• World Event bosses are now accessible through the Dungeon Finder. We can finally get a chance to acquire those very rare World Event items even though they’re not in season!
• Dungeon Deserter debuff increased to 30 minutes from 15 minutes!

General

• Several raid buffs have their ranges increased to 100 yards, up from 45 yards.
• You can now trade your Frozen Orbs for other trade goods.
• Tier-10 4-Piece Set Bonus adjusted for some classes.

Looks like we’re in for a lot of goodies this coming Patch 3.3.3! For a more detailed look at the patch notes, you can visit the Public Test Realm Patch Notes.

Just the other day, I heard people talking in trade chat about how the Blizzard Authenticator was only good for getting the Core Hound mount. I was intrigued, since in my opinion, I think the Blizzard Authenticator was a good way of keeping your account secure. I thought they were just the usual whiney Azerothians who had nothing else to do but whine about how Blizzard is messing up the game in one way or another.

But apparently, someone created a trojan that could actually intercept the authenticator codes and enable the hacker to change your password, empty your account and sell your stuff! How interesting! The trojan works the same way key loggers work.

When you’re infected with the trojan, the following happens:
When you log in your WoW account and you’ve entered your authenticator code, the trojan will intercept the code, send it to the hacker and send a wrong code to Blizzard. When that happens, you’ll get an error and the hacker will get the correct code and use that code to access your account.

Tsk, tsk, and just when we thought our beloved WoW accounts (which we’ve probably spent a good chunk of our life on) are safe!

To know whether you have the trojan, be sure to check if you have the file name “emcor.dll” on your computer. It will probably be at “C:\Users\(Your user name)\AppData\Temp”, but if you don’t find it there, try to do a whole scan of your PC using your virus scan just to be sure. Better safe than sorry!

While this might discourage you from spending $6 on an authenticator, I would still suggest you get one. While an authenticator might still get hacked, it still gives added protection to your accounts. Also get/invest on a good virus scanner. Or atleast regularly scan your computer and update your virus scanner religiously so that your computer will be protected.

With the introduction of the new LFG system, Blizzard has changed the way of leveling from level 70 to level 80. Before patch 3.3.0, the best way to power level to any level is by questing. Just by doing quests the whole day and in the most efficient manner. If you don’t understand what I mean by ‘questing in the most efficient manner’, check out the quest leveling guides made by Joana. Her guides can get you to level 80 in the fastest way possible!

But with the new LFG system, people are leaning towards leveling thru instances. Just queueing the whole day, doing the same instances over and over until you ‘DING!’

While some people like to grind instances to level, I normally level by power questing. But after leveling let’s say, 3 or 4 other toons, you kind of get sick and tired of doing the same quests over and over and OVER, and reading the same stories and lore again and again.

I just finished leveling another toon to 80. I leveled this toon by instance leveling and it just makes me think of the pros and cons of leveling a toon by either power questing or by going to instances.

Leveling by Questing:

• You get more money from the quest rewards and by selling the item rewards that you don’t need.
• If you’re careful enough, you spend less on repairs since you can avoid quests that are too hard to do.
• You don’t need to wait for anyone else.
• You get more reputation by doing quests for the different factions

Leveling by Instances:

• You get better gear from instances.
• You get to know how to play your toon in a raiding environment. It took me a while to get used to tanking on my paladin since I was playing him as retribution from level 1 to 80.
• You get emblems and other cool items like mounts (i.e. Oculus and Utgarde Pinnacle)
• No need to run all over Azeroth since all you have to do is queue. But then you have downtime since you have to wait in queues.

For now, I’ll probably be leveling with instances, unless I plan to level an alliance toon (since I don’t know the Alliance lore yet). But when Cataclysm comes, I’ll probably go back to power questing again!

Another World Event is up! The Lunar Festival is basically the WoW version of our Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is usually celebrated on the first day of the lunar calendar of the year. And for this year, February 14 was the start of the lunar calendar. Fascinating how Valentine’s Day and the Chinese New Year coincided, don’t you think so?

Anyway, there’s really nothing new about this year’s Lunar Festival. Same old, same old. All you have to do is visit all the Elders in ALL of Azeroth! I kid you not! As a Horde player, I had to brave the major Alliance cities namely Ironforge, Stormwind and Darnassus just so I could visit the Elders stationed there. Same thing for Alliance players. You have to go deep inside Orgrimmar, Undercity and Thunderbluff to get the coins from the Horde Elders.

Here’s a nice guide from WoWHead to make your traveling a little more efficient. Trust me, it’s going to make your life a whole lot easier!

After you’ve visited all the elders in ALL the zones, you’ll have enough Coins of Ancestry to buy yourself a Lunar Festival Dress or Pant Suit to complete another achievement.

You’ll also need to kill Omen to get Elune’s Blessing, but that’s pretty easy to achieve. You don’t even need a group. Just hang around as a group is killing Omen and when it dies, just stand on the corpse and you’ll get the blessing as well.

Well, that’s pretty much it for the Lunar Festival. Not exactly my most favorite World Event since it requires soooooooo much traveling! In the guide I shared, it said it’ll only take you 4 hours. Don’t believe it! It took me around 6-8 hours just to finish the whole thing, rawr! And since I’m a sadist, I decided to do it the whole day! Big mistake. I got a WoW overdose and had to take a day off from the game, hehe!

The Lunar Festival will be around for 2 weeks, so take your time in trying to complete the achievement!

I’m sure a lot of you WoW geeks out there have seen this video already. But it’s the first time for me to see this and for those who haven’t seen this extremely hilarious and entertaining video (like me!), then I believe you shouldn’t miss out on seeing this!

Spacebar Clown!

I’m sooo guilty of this compulsive habit! It just comes naturally, you know. If you’re a WoW player, you’d understand when I say that. Imagine this. There you are, mindlessly leveling and the next thing you know, you’re hitting the space bar and jumping up and down across the fields of Mulgore, like a guy high on caffeine while killing mobs.

The Spacebar is your bestfriend! When you’re bored in WoW, being a Spacebar Clown is the next best thing to keeping yourself occupied and entertained. Well, maybe next to hunting down little gnomes. Hahaha!

For the Horde!

Considering that you have a couple of alt toons already in WoW, I have 3 ways for you to earn money fast in Patch 3.3!

And if you have alt toons like me (I’m sure you do!), these tips are going to be most applicable to you!

3. Sell Your Emblems For Gems. I try to regularly do Random Heroic Dungeons on all my toons ever since that feature came out, and as of now, I’ve amassed quite a number of Emblems. Like on my priest, I really don’t need any Emblem of Triumphs anyway. So the number just keeps on growing and growing and growing. Last week, my Emblem of Triumphs were around 300+. So what I did was buy gems worth around 200 emblems. I got around 10 pieces of gems. Then I used my other alt which was a JC to cut the gems and sold them gems on AH. Each gem was priced roughly around 180-200g so I pretty much made around 2000g on those. Not bad! If you don’t have a JC, I’m sure you have a guildmate or friend who can help you out.

2. Sell Your Emblems For Primordial Saronite and sell the Saronite! With my priest, I make it a point to save my Frost Emblems for the tier 10 gear. But with my other alts, like my druid and my paladin, I use them as Frost Emblems farmer so I can buy Primordial Saronite to sell. Just the other day, I bought two (2) Primordial Saronite with I sold for 2300g! If you do Random Heroic Dungeons everyday, you get 2 Frost Emblems then do the Weekly Raid Dungeon and you get 5 additional more emblems for the week! It’s pretty easy to get 23 Emblems of Frost for the Primordial Saronite. What if you want to gear up your alt toons? Don’t worry, you’ll be getting a lot of Emblems of Triumphs as well, so you can use to buy gear for your toon. If you don’t need any more gear, go to tip #1, haha!

1. Sell A Battered Hilt! One of the fastest ways to gear up your toon aside from farming for badges is to keep on running the new Ice Crown Citadel 5 man dungeons. The normal mode drops level 219 gear epic gear, while the heroic mode drops level 232 epic gear. Chances are, if you’re there practically 24/7, you’ll have have higher chances of having a Battered Hilt drop! Hopefully you win it too. A Battered Hilt is an item that starts a quest so you can get a nice epic weapon for the melee. But pfft, screw the weapon! Do you know that each Battered Hilt costs around 15,000g in the Auction House! Woohoo! Moneeeyyy! Shiniesss!

I currently have three (3) level 80 toons that I regularly play: my priest (my main toon specced with both healing spec, hehe), my druid (tree/boomkin) and my pretty little paladin (retadin/tank). I use my paladin and my druid to farm for badges. And honestly, it’s safe to say that these tips worked for me! In just a matter of (2) weeks, I’ve managed to earn around 15,000 gold with just following tips #1 and #2. I’m currently trying to sell the Battered Hilt I’ve managed to snag in one of my PUG runs. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get rid of it soon. More money for meee!

I can’t help but laugh at how definitely geeky I can be. I’m getting married in a few months time (more specifically August, 7 more months to go!) and I guess (as much as I don’t want to admit) I have wedding on the brain.

So when I saw this WoW Collectible Coin Set, the first thing that came to mind is “Omigod, wedding arrhae!”

According to the dictionary, Arrhae (n.) means:

Money or other valuable thing given to evidence a contract; a pledge or earnest.[Webster 1913 Suppl.]

In the Philippines (where I live!), during a wedding, the groom presents arrhae to his bride after it has been blessed by a priest, and it symbolizes the groom’s unquestionable trust and confidence. By giving the arras, the groom surrenders all his material wealth into his bride’s care. (YAHOO!)

Hahaha, so that’s it for your Philippine Wedding 101! Talk about off-topic, haha.

So let’s go back to the WoW Collectible Set, shall we?

A set has 3 coins each (gold, silver and copper) and each coin in the set is plated in precious metal and features a major Horde or Alliance leader. The box set also comes with a non-removable commemorative metal Horde or Alliance emblem plaque.

Any WoW fanatic would probably love to get one of these! They’re currently available for pre-order and will be available by June 2010. Each coin set costs $76.99, but if you pre order now, you can get them for $61.59 and save $15.40!

Where to buy: Horde Coins / Alliance Coins

I can’t say I’m an expert alt leveler, but I can definitely say I’m experienced in leveling an alt very fast, all by myself! I’m sharing with you guys 10 tips on how to get your alt to level 80 ASAP!

• Use a leveling guide. If you have money to spare, get yourself a leveling guide. The less time you decide which quest to do first, the faster you’ll get to 80.
• Use Light-Headed. With leveling add ons like Light-Headed, knowing where to go will be easy as pie. Just click the link of the coordinates and you’ll find where you need to go next.
• Use Heirloom Items. The faster you kill things, the better. And 2 pieces of the Heirloom Items (the chest and the shoulders) will give you each 10% more experience points when you kill mobs and when you submit quests. That’s 20% additional more experience points!
• Skip Group Quests. Unless you have a big bad level 80 nanny with you, then looking for groups to do group quests will definitely slow you down. Skip them.
• Arm your toon with bags with the most slots. The less times you go to town to sell stuff, the better!
• Don’t bother  with leveling your profession yet. Like I said, while leveling you need to tunnel vision! Level, level, level!
• Buy Cold Weather Flying Book at lvl 70. After the last patch, the Cold Weather Flying Book is now bind on account. You can actually buy the book with a level 80 toon and mail the book to your level 70 alt. Questing with a flying mount will definitely make going around way easier and faster.
• Use Auto Loot. Again, like I said, tunnel vision. Kill, loot, kill, loot, submit, quest, quest, quest.
• Always log off at an Inn. Blue Bar is GOOD, Purple Bar is Bad!

And the most important tip…

DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE. No guild chat, no PM chat or any other chat. Every second you type out something in chat, adds a second longer to your levelling! The only people you should talk to when you’re levelling are the NPCs and yourself, hehe.

1. Cross Server LFG – Just like the PVP Battleground, we will be able to group with other players from other servers in the same battlegroup! I’m a little intrigued with this feature since it was also mentioned that it works the same as entering a PVP battleground. If you use the LFG tool, you will be teleported inside the dungeon, same way when you queue for a battleground. Does this mean that we’ll be doing away from summoning stones in the future?

2. Vote to Kick Feature – Ah, thank God! Finally a way democratic and easier way of getting rid of annoying people in a PuG! 4 votes, and you’re out!

3. Disenchant Feature – Another interesting feature! As long as you have a disenchanter in the group (with the appropriate skill level, of course) you will get the Disenchant option when it comes to rolling for loot, aside from the usual Need and Greed. And obviously, if you roll for Disenchant, you automatically get the enchanting mats if you win the roll.

4. Smart Match Making System for LFG – This feature will help lessen the headache you can get from forming PuGs. It’s not a guarantee though, since you might still end up with annoying and immature players. However, least experienced or geared players can be assured that they’ll be paired up with atleast ONE experienced or geared player. Lucky for the noobs, unfortunate for the uber player!

5. Weekly Raid Quests – They’re scrapping out the current normal and heroic dungeon dailies. This actually makes me a bit sad. I actually look forward to doing heroics dailies, boohoo. Anyway, the NPCs in Dalaran will instead give out weekly raid quests and raiders will have to kill random targets from any raid dungeons from Naxxramas to Ice Crown.

Can’t wait for Patch 3.3!

I know I should be writing about Brewfest or maybe even Onyxia 3.2.2 going live but you can practically read about those things in other websites already, like MMO Champion. I haven’t personally gone on an Onyxia run with my guildmates so I really can’t share any new and fresh information.

As for Brewfest, there’s really not much difference from last year, except that it’s more achievement based now and the drop rate for the Brewfest mounts have been increased significantly.

What I really want to talk about is the possibility of the different tokens (Emblems of Conquest, Valor, Heroism, Triumph, Champion’s Seals and Stone Keeper’s Shard) being Bind on Account.

Blizzard made leveling alt toons more convenient and easier when they came out with the Heirloom items. They also made Cold Weather Flying available to level 70 alt toons. As long as you have a level 80 toon, you can buy the Cold Weather Flying book from trainer in Dalaran and then pass the book to your alt by mail, as long as the alt toon is on the same account.

If Blizzard can make the Heirloom items and Cold Weather Flying Book Bind on Account, I’m sure it’s very possible for them to make tokens Bind on Account as well. I mean seriously, I raid with my main toon around 3-4 times a week. And from those runs, I pretty much get upgrades for my gear. I don’t really get to use tokens anymore and they just end up accumulating (see image above!). The next thing you know, a new expansion comes out and say goodbye to my gazillion, hard earned tokens. What a waste!

If you’re a regular WoW player, you know where my frustration is coming from. You probably have an undergeared level 80 alt or two that you want to bring to your guild runs, but your guild won’t allow it since they’re pretty much undergeared. And by now, you’re probably so sick and tired of running heroics over and over every single day just so you can get enough tokens to buy emblem gear. Am I right or am I right?! RIGHT!

So there. I’m waiting for the day when tokens becoming Bind on Account. But for now, I guess I can buy those BoE bracers from the Valor Emblem vendor and sell them for gold. Or maybe the raw epic gems. But I have a huge problem tho. I’m ridiculously lazy when it comes to selling stuff off the auction house, hahahaha!

[ Image courtesy of author ]

And then lately, they offered the Faction change re-customization where you can go from Horde to Alliance and vice versa. And soon, even race change is going to be available in 3.2.2! (Crap, I re-levelled a BE priest just so I can have a pretty toon. I used to have an undead one. Bleh)

With all these re-customization features, I’m surprised they still haven’t offered a REAL customization feature wherein you can actually change your toon however you like it. You know, like change the shape of the nose, of the eyes, of the mouth, the face and the body.  A customization feature wherein you can actually make your toon look exactly like yourself!

That would be an awesome feature, I would think. I always make it a point that all my toons in every MMORPG I play look a bit like me. And the blood elf is the closest toon in World of Warcraft that looks similar to myself since it’s the skinniest! I’m so glad they have that short bob cut with bangs (see image above!) since I’m sporting that hairstyle as well in real life, haha.

I really think a full customization feature is a great idea! It would definitely change the feel of the game! Imagine a fat blood elf, or a fat undead (though that would be weird), or maybe even a skinny Tauren! Or a tall gnome, bwahaha.

That would be sooo hilarious!

But I guess that would be hard on programming, designing and all that stuff since they have to customize all the gear to fit as well. Oh well, a little musing doesn’t hurt!

Now you can play and challenge others to a game of Peggle right from within World of Warcraft.

The feature set includes:

• Quick play mode with 12 stages based on major locations in WoW
• Two Peggle masters, alongside a Peggle Talent Tree!
• Duel Mode: Compete in a quick match against other players!
• Battle Mode: Create custom leaderboards for friends and guildmates!
• /peggleloot: A hilarious new way to “roll” for loot! Best shot gets the item!

It’s free to download and installs like you would any other mod.

Peggle in WoW