New Fishing Derby in Patch 3.3.0

There has been a new fishing derby added in patch 3.3.0. This will be a mid-week fishing derby in Northernd.

"The all-new Kalu'ak Fishing Derby, a test of fishing skill with a healthy dash of luck, has come to Northrend! Every Wednesday beginning at 8 PM players can try to catch the elusive Blacktip Shark. Elder Clearwater sits in Dalaran for one hour awaiting the return of the quickest, most experienced fisher to bring him this shark. This champion fisher will be rewarded in-kind for returning with the first catch. Those who aren't able to return with the first catch will still receive just reward for getting the Blacktip Shark to Elder Clearwater before he takes his leave. It is said that these sharks' favorite meal are the bite-sized Pygmy Suckerfish. Perhaps a hook in their waters will do the trick."

You can find the latest patch notes Here

You can find the latest PTR notes Here

Good Luck,

-Wranngar

Blizzard Announces Extended Support Hours

Blizzard announced they have extended the hours of their phone support teams in order to help players get support at convenient times. Their Technical, Billing and Account Services are now taking calls seven days per week, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Pacific time. If you're having any problems, give them a call. The number for billing and account services is 1-800-592-5499, and for technical support it is 1-949-955-1382. You can also check out their support webpage at http://us.blizzard.com/support/ for more information.

Nightelf Mohawk - "It's Time to Pity Some Fools"

Now you too can be a Nightelf Mohawk, just like Mr. T. This is something Mr. T and Blizzard cooked up I guess. You can get a Mohawk Grenade from outside any starting area. Just look for the Nightelf Mohawk standing there. When you talk to him you have to click on the 'link' that says "I believe in you" and he gives you a Mohawk Gernade that lasts 24 hours and has 5 charges to it. You use it on a group of people and it transforms them into Nightelf Mohawks whether they want it or not. You target then just like you target an AoE spell. You can remove the buff, just like any friendly buff, by right clicking on it. It is just one more interesting thing to do while it lasts. There is not time frame on how long this will be available.

Wranngar 12/29/08

I got Wranngar to level 80 today. I hit 80 at 4:14PM Eastern time on 12/29/08. I ran out of quests and I ended up hitting 80 doing the dailys in Icecrown. I went and got my training which ran me close to 200 gold, used my talent point then headed to Storm Peaks to do some skinning. I got enough leather to make another Inscription bag which I sent to a guild member who could use it. That gave me another point in Leatherworking, my skill is now 418. I will work on that some more. Right now I am just happy to have finally gotten to 80. If I get back on later I am going to hit the battlegrounds, I have been waiting a long time to get back into them. After that I will probably work on Wrangar.

Update: I did some battlegrounds on Wranngar tonight. I fought in 4 AV's, all losses. It is also the daily battleground today. The Alliance was doing really bad in all 4 battles. We only had one battle where we were in Frostwolf Keep and ready to down Drek but the Horde got Vann first. In the other 3 we lost on reinforcements defending the cave. I got 76 kills and around 1200 honor so it wasn't too bad. It just felt soooo good to be back in the battlegrounds :). I am interested in winning right now though because I need honor. After that I went and did some exploring. I have all of Outlands explored and got the Achievement for that, now I am working on Azeroth. After that I will have to do Kalimdor and I will have Eastern Kingdoms done. All that will leave is North Rend. I have about half of that explored. Once I have all of those explored I will get the title: Explorer.

Wranngar 12/08/08

I played Wranngar some tonight and got quite a few bars but not to level 73 yet. I think I can get him there tomorrow though. I was questing in Dragonblight tonight and got a lot of quests done. It is all pretty easy stuff and I did one quest chain that had to be 12 parts long. I turned some Knothide Leather Scraps into Knothide Leather and then turned that into Heavy Knothide Leather for Wrangar tonight, he is starting to get a good stockpile of leather on him, time to hit the auction house. I made quite a bit of gold today questing also, around 60. That's not too bad for questing I think. The quests are starting to pay more and I have been selling all the quest rewards so I always pick the plate as it usually sells for the most. I am having no problem at all killing the mobs I need to kill, they go down pretty quick and easy. I will be able to get on earlier tomorrow depending on whether Blizzard does a shut down or just rolling restarts.

Wrangar 11/22/08

I played both Wrangar and Wranngar for a little bit today. I got Wrangar to level 60 but Wranngar is still at level 70. I did some questing on Wrangar in Hellfire Peninsula then went to Ebon Hold to train when I hit 60. I am still finding this DeathKnight pretty easy to play. It has so many things that give you health back that I come out of most fights with full health and I can come out of a fight with 3 mobs a couple to a few levels higher than me with very little health loss when it is all over. It was also World of Warcrafts 4th anniversary and they gave everyone a Blizzard Bear pet. I made sure I logged into all my toons and got it out of the mail. It is a little baby white bear. It is the first pet I have on my DeathKnight. I am finding questing on Wranngar to be boring so I have been spending most of my time questing on Wrangar.

Battlegrounds 10/21/08

I have tried to do 2 battlegrounds on Wranngar tonight, AB which is the daily and EoS. In both of them I was able to get in then nothing happens. You just sit there and wait. I had to exit out of both of them which resulted in me getting the deserter debuff. I am not happy about that at all as I never leave a battleground before it has ended. This is just another epic failure on Blizzards part. I will do my Shattered Sun dailys and see if I can do my daily battleground after that. I have a ticket in for all the good that will do....

Update: I finally was able to do my daily battleground about 3 hours later. As I said it was Arathi Basin. We won the second one I was in but it was close, too close. We had 3 nodes and all we had to do was defend them but the Alliance can't do that, they have to leave 1, or none, at a node and go in ones or twos and try to get another. Needless to say nodes changed hands quite a few times. I am looking into changing servers on Wranngar to get into a better battlegroup, I think any other one is better than Bloodlust.

Headless Horseman 10/18/08

Hallows End is upon us. One of the activities of this is the Headless Horseman. He is located in the Graveyard inside Scarlet Monastary. There is a quest I had to do in Goldshire on Wranngar so I could get the quest to go get the head of the Headless Horseman. Once I had that quest done I just hung around in Stormwind, which is a different place now that they applied the patch for Wrath of the Litch King, and watched trade chat until I saw someone looking for a dps for the Headless Horseman. When I had a group I headed up to Scarlet Monastary. No one in the group I was in had done the quest that day and the first time you do it you can do it twice. There were 2 of us that hadn't done it yet so we did it a total of 7 times. He has a chance to drop his mount which is very similiar to the war horse you can get in Kazharan but it didn't drop for our group. All in all it was pretty easy and we had no deaths. When Blizzard put in the new patch they added some new talents to the talent tree which caused them to refund everyones talent points. I was still trying to get my spec right so I was not 100% but that was ok, I spec for the battlegrounds anyway. There are a lot of new additions to the game already present for the next expansion, Wrath of the Litch King one of which is Stormwind Harbor. Now when you take the boat from Darnassus it doesn't take you to Wetlands, it takes you to Stormwind. They also added inscriptions and glyphs but I have not looked into them yet.

Battlegrounds 10/3/08

Another bad day for the Alliance in the battlegrounds. I fought in 14 battles on Wranngar, 7 wins and 7 losses. We were doing bad in all the battlegrounds except AB. I was in 2 battles in AB and we won both of them, one was a 5 cap. AB was the daily so I was able to get that done. I was in 8 battles in EoS, 4 wins and 4 losses. I am not sure what the Alliances' problem is lately but we usually dominate EoS. There has also been a lot of AFK in EoS which you don't usually see. I fought in 4 AV's, 1 win and 3 losses. That was just a lot of the stupidity I have come to expect from the Alliance in AV. We would have won 2 more of the AV battles but someone had to go and take SHGY causing all the Horde to rez right where we were trying to cap towers/objectives and they just overran us. That also happened in the battle we won but we were able to hang on and win by reinforcements. Even then it was close. Of course AV was plagued with AFK, up to 10 per battle, I guess Blizzard is just not up to the challenge of correcting the AFK problem as they have failed so far.

Battlegrounds 9/2/08

Today's daily was Eye of the Storm and I got it done on Wranngar in the first one I was in. I turned that in for 11g99s plus the 419 extra honor that you get from the daily. After that I headed into AV for 1 win and 5 losses, seems the Alliance fell right back into their clueless groove. You would not believe the amount of AFK in all the battles I was in. There is a new twist now that a lot more people are using TuringTest AFK Reporter, you see a lot of people at the end with 1,000 dmg, 1,500 dmg and so on, they just hit something once in awhile so it does not report them AFK. To give you a basic idea, most people have between 50,000 all the way up to 200,000+ dmg when a battle is over. It is really sad that these losers are costing us so many battles... In the one we did win we had a lot of people that were actually playing and we rushed IBGY, got that, then it was no problem to take IBT, TP, Galv then move on to FWGY, FWRH, East and West towers and finally Drek. That was a maximum honor game. We had another battle where we were doing really good then someone decided to take SHGY which cause the Horde to start rezzing at FWRH and that coat us the battle right there. When will people learn? It is the same stupid mistakes over and over again that cost us so many battles along with all the AFK... Blizzard really needs to get their act together and do something about all the AFK in ALL the battlegrounds, it is really out of control. Once someone is marked AFK they should have 60 seconds to clear it or they are kicked from the battleground with a 24 hour deserter debuff. They get 3 of those in one month they get banned from the battlegrounds for a month, first offense. Second offense they are banned from the battlegrounds for life. What they are doing now, if anything, is definitely not working that is for sure.

Battlegrounds 8/21/08

Today's battleground was Warsong Gulch. I did it on Wranngar and we won the first one I was in. It didn't look good at the start but we managed to pull it off somehow, I capped one flag. I got the 11g99s and 419 extra honor this daily pays plus the 3 Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor you get for winning. After that I did one EoS, we lost. I got in late and you could see there was no teamwork, a few people trying for one tower, a few trying for another, they managed to hold one and we didn't get another before it ended. After that I went into AV. I fought in 13 battles, 6 wins and 7 losses. Sad to say that is pretty good for Alliance in AV these days. We had 2 losses where people took and held SHGY which is a guaranteed loss and one win where they took it and we won on reinforcements. The only reason we pulled that off was the Horde team was pretty bad. It would have only taken about 10 minutes if they hadn't taken SHGY, and we would have killed Drek for extra honor, but it ended up taking over 45 minutes after they did. After that the winning plan seemed to be rushing FWGY, then hitting FWRH and having the people that died in the initial rush get TP and IBT. The other losses were just poor teamwork. As usual there were a lot of AFK in all the battles. No surprise as Blizzard doesn't seem to be doing anything about that problem.

Battlegrounds 8/14/08

Today's daily battleground was Arathi Basin. We didn't do too well in there, overall I had 4 wins and 4 losses but I got my daily done. The daily pays 11g99s, 419 honor and I also got the 3 Arathi Basin Mark of Honor for winning. After I had finally won I went back in for some more and had 3 good groups where we had two 4 caps and a 5 cap. I only have about 60 of those marks as I used some to buy some gear so I need to build those back up along with WSG marks. I went on to fight in 9 Eye of the Storm battles, 6 wins and 3 losses. We had some good groups and some bad groups, with a couple of the good groups we had 4 caps and held the Horde on their rock. I also fought in 5 AV's, 3 wins and 2 losses so that wasn't a really bad day in AV. We killed Drek in all of our wins and both of our losses involved people going for Galv first which usually ends in a loss and in one of them they defended SHGY which almost always ends in a loss. Overall it seemed like the quality of players was better today. As usual we had a lot of AFK in AV but they are getting reported more and more and people are asking me about the TuringTest AFK Reporter when I post the Leechers/AFK and they are saying they are going to download it. If only 5 people in every battleground had this mod AFK would be a thing of the past as they just would not be able to get away with it. If Blizzard put a little effort in and started removing them from the battlegrounds, say after 3 minutes, and banning them from battlegrounds for a certain amount of time each time, and maybe permanently after so many, I think it would go a long way to solving the problem too.

Battlegrounds 8/11/08

Another day of failure for the Alliance in the battlegrounds. Well in AV anyway. Eye of the Storm was today's daily and I got it done on my second battle. I was fighting on Wranngar as usual. I got the 11g99s and 419 extra honor for that. Then I went into AV to do some of those. We ended up winning 2 and losing 6. There were a lot of AFK in there as there always is but at least people are getting sick of it and reporting them. I list all the AFK every 5 minutes or so to make sure people know who to mark. Some people I list say they are not AFK but when they have been in there for 10-15 minutes and have 0 damage and 0 heals or only around 1,000 of either they are AFK. Usually the heals are from healing themselves. Blizzard really needs to change how they are dealing with AFK, assuming they are dealing with it at all. These people just go AFK for the whole battle then right at the end they run out and hit something to clear the AFK. They don't get the honor but they do get the marks. There was the usual stupidity going on in there, half or better of the offense going for Galv at the start, holding SHGY, the usual. We got both our wins by killing Drek but the Horde only got about half theirs by killing Vann, the rest they got on reinforcements due to the Alliance turtling. I went back into EoS after that because I didn't want to waste any more time in AV. We didn't do too bad in there, not great but not too bad either, 12 wins and 7 losses. This is a battleground we usually dominate in though. We had quite a few 4 caps and I got to run the flag a lot. We had some good groups and then we had some really bad ones. Some people were really poorly geared too, you can tell when someone dies jumping off the rock they are pretty poorly geared lol. Anyway I broke the 45,000 lifetime kill mark and got 581 kills today alone.

Battlegrounds 8/3/08

I did only battlegrounds again today. I fought in 28 battles total on Wranngar. The daily today was Warsong Gulch and I fought in 7 of those, 2 wins and 5 losses but I did get my quest done and got my 11g99s, 419 extra honor and of course my Warsong Gulch Marks of Honor. I also fought in 8 Alterac Valley, 4 wins and 4 losses which I thought was pretty good for holiday weekend. I fought in 11 Eye of the Storm, 7 wins and 4 losses and 2 Arathi Basin, both losses. I don't know why the Alliance is doing so bad in Arathi Basin lately, we used to do good in there. In one of my battles in AV I saw someone boxing/bridging. That is when you are controlling 4 or 5 characters all at once. This can be done with 4 or 5 computers using "bridging" or with one computer using "boxing", at least that is how it was explained to me. These characters all looked the same, all moved the same, moved at the same time, all casted the same, jumped the same, there was no doubt what they were doing. They were Shamans. Blizzard allows this, even in the battlegrounds. I, and a lot of other people, don't think this should be allowed but Blizzard is looking at it from a money point of view of course, this person is paying for, in this case, 4 accounts. Anyway I ran into them in AV and when all 4 of them hit me at once with chain lightning my health dropped by about 90%. The next shot and I was dead. I guess the only drawback to this is you can only attack one target at one time. We ran into them later in IBT and tore them apart, there was 3 of us and we owned them. I hope it took him an hour to set it back up again. I have attached a shot of them at FWGY. It is not a very good shot but look how the totems are placed. They were named: Earth, Wind, Fire & Water.

Battlegrounds 8/1/08

The daily battleground today was Eye of the Storm again which wasn't bad, we do good in there and it wasn't their holiday weekend. We won the first one I was in, 2000/300, we trashed them. We had MT, DR and BET capped and were keeping them busy at FRR while we ran the flag. It didn't take me long to collect my 11g99s, 419 extra honor and of course get my 3 Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor mailed to me.

I did some AV's after I was done in EoS, I fought in 7 battles, 4 wins and 3 losses. Our first battle was a win, then we had a loss, then 3 more wins and finally 2 losses before I called it quits. I usually don't fight in a battleground on it's holiday weekend but I decided to give it a try to see how the new add-on I installed today, TuringTest AFK Reporter, was working. I hit it at the right time because overall we were doing good for awhile. Yeah there were a lot of AFK, and the add-on was working great, but it didn't really get bad until the place filled up with weekend warriors. In our wins we rushed FWGY and the relief hut in one, even took down Galv at the start in one of them and still won, that should give you an idea of how good the group was at one point. But towards the end it got really bad and the last 2 battles everyone was in Dun Baldar so I decided to call it quits. Those are the weekend warriors, they are not there to fight, they are there to get honor and marks, they are just a little above the AFK as far as I'm concerned. The only difference being if the Horde come into DB while the are "guarding" it they will put up a fight even if it is half hearted. I am really pleased with this new AFK reporter, it reports automatically so I don't have to waste time doing that anymore and I think if everyone was using it, or Blizzard got off their ass and incorporated it into the game, AFK in battlegrounds would be a thing of the past.

Battlegrounds 7/30/08

I only did battlegrounds today. I did them on Wranngar. I did 14 battles in AV, 8 wins, 6 losses. AV was the daily battleground today too, I got that out of the way on the second battle. Jacedic fought in a couple of them with me, I think we had two wins and one loss while he was there. The Alliance wasn't doing too bad overall but the AFK's are killing us. We had a couple battles where almost half our team was AFK, Blizzard needs to do something about this problem instead of just saying they are doing something about it. It is hard to believe they are doing anything about it when you see the same people AFK day after day, week after week, it is sad. For the most part the strat that seemed to be working today was rush FWGY then move forward and backwards and cap towers and GY's. The strat that continues not to work is take and hold SHGY, we lost a couple due to that and a couple more due to people going for Galv first. We won one battle on reinforcements and the rest killing Drek so I got some pretty good honor out of it. We only had a couple battles, one was where almost half the team was AFK, where we didn't get any towers and almost no honor. The Horde won most of their battles on reinforcements as they usually do, that is due to AV still being unbalanced even after Blizzard "fixed" it. Anyway I got some good honor and a lot of kills along with the 11g99s and Alterac Valley Mark's of Honor which I have to let expire in my mailbox because I can't carry anymore.

Battlegrounds 7/27/08

I was in 11 battles today on Wranngar, 1 Arathi Basin which was my daily and 10 Alterac Valley. We won the first Arathi Basin I was in for my daily. We started out with a 3 cap, ST, LM and BS, then we got the farm and eventually, around 1,000 resources, the gold mine. When you have a 5 cap the resources tick off really quick and it was over fast. We held the Horde at their GY after we had the 5 cap.

In Alterac Valley the first one I was in was a win, we rushed FWGY, them moved on to FWRH and went back and got IBGY, TP and Galv. Once we had everything capped we went in and took down Drek. It was a good easy win and I hoped that was the way AV was going but I guess that was too much to hope for. The next battle we had we tried the same plan as the first and almost pulled it off but the Horde ended up killing Vann before we could get Drek down. We proceeded to lose the next 5 battles too. A couple of them we didn't get any farther than IBGY and were lucky to kill Galv for some honor. Then we won one using the same strat as the first battle, we rushed FWGY then moved forward and backwards getting the towers and GY's. Once we had 3 towers capped we took down Drek for the win. The last 2 we lost, there was a lot of fighting among the Alliance and a lot of AFK in all the battles I was in. The AFK problem is getting worse if anything despite the fact Blizzard says they are taking action against people that are going AFK in the battlegrounds. I saw a couple people in there today that I saw in there weeks ago, still AFK. In my opinion Blizzard is doing nothing about this problem.

Battleground 6/19/08

I fought in 3 AV's on Wranngar tonight, 1 win and 2 losses. The first one I was in was a win and the next 2 were losses. In the win we rushed FWGY and quickly moved onto FWRH while some capped IBT and TP. After we had FWRH clocking we capped the East and West Frostwolf Towers and then went in and took out Drek, nice and smooth. In the second battle we were also doing pretty good, we had IBT and TP capped, we had IBGY and FWGY, although we lost FWGY and had to get it back, a usual occurrence but one that costs time. We had just capped West Frostwolf Tower and were waiting on East and FWRH to cap when the Horde killed Vann, we just ran out of time. The third battle was a turtle because people went for Galv at the start which resulted in a lot of the offense getting wiped out and sent back to Stormpike Graveyard to start over. Going for Galv first is an almost guaranteed loss and is not worth the 63 honor he gives. I keep telling people if they think his 63 honor is nice they should try winning some time. Even though we had no offense to speak of and everyone was at Dun Baldar we managed to get the Horde down to 50 resources before we lost. If people had put a little more effort into holding our bunkers I think we could have won it on kills. There were the usual 6-8 AFK in all 3 battles I was in, good job on that Blizzard.

Update: I went back in and did 2 more AV's, one win one loss. The first battle I was in we won but I'm not sure how. Most of our team was in Dun Baldar and I guess that helped some as they were able to hold the Horde off from killing Vann for quite awhile after they had the 4 bunkers capped. We didn't have many on offense but were able to finally work our way into Frostwolf Keep and cap the East and West Towers. We had the FWRH clocking when we went for Drek, I think everyone knew that we already had all the luck we were going to get as far as time was concerned. We managed to take down Drek and the Horde never touched Vann even though they had the 4 bunkers capped at for at least 5 miniutes. We had a lot more AFK in these 2 battles than we did in the previous 3, they don't even bother to come out of the cave, they just stay right where they spawn. Blizzard says they are doing something about the AFK but as hard as I look I just can't see it. In the second battle there were 10 people spamming 10 different plans at the start so basically everyone took off in 10 different directions and everything just fell apart. That battle didn't last too long but I managed to pick up 2037 honor from these battles and 259 kills.

Battlegrounds 5/26/08

I fought in 11 AV's today on Wranngar, 4 wins and 7 losses. Overall we did pretty good with everyone working together for the most part and only turtled once. We lost the majority on reinforcements which is how we usually lose although the Horde did kill Vann a few times. I tried to tank Drek in a couple of the battles we won but we didn't have any heals at Frostwolf so it was just a matter of DPSing him down. That seems to be where the Alliance fails a lot, when it comes to planning and organization. The Horde seem to be pretty well organized and that is why they win so often. We also had at least 2 battles where people went for Galv first and that is an almost guaranteed loss right there. The daily battleground today was AB again but as it is AB weekend I decided not to do it. Of course the AFKers are still a major problem as Blizzard is still failing to handle that situation in any type of manner that could be called acceptable.

Battlegrounds 5/24/08

After the daily battleground I fought in 3 AV's and 3 WSG's on Wranngar. We won one of the AV's and lost 2. In the won we won we rushed FWRH then worked backwards to get the towers and FWGY. We also got Galv in that one and after the Frostwolf Towers capped we went in and downed Drek, a pretty smooth run. In one of the losses I got in late and they were already losing, it appeared they went for Galv at the start, tactical suicide, and then decided to hold SHGY. That caused a turtle at SHGY which eventually moved back to Dun Baldar where we finally lost on reinforcements. In the other loss it was a case of people not working together, some went for Galv at the start, I don't know what the fascination is with him but he has cost us more battles, and a lot of people decided to dismount at IBGY and fight the Horde standing there while only a few actually followed the plan and went to FWGY. Being split up into small groups made it pretty easy for the Horde to wipe us out and we all ended up back in Dun Baldar where everyone decided to turtle and we lost on reinforcements. And of course there were a lot of AFK. I know Blizzard says they are doing something about it and I have read and posted in the forums about it but it appears nothing is being done, the problem is worse than ever. In Warsong Gulch we actually won 2 and lost 1 which was pretty good for a pickup group. In the first battle we won I captured the flag once and in the second battle I captured the flag twice and returned our flag 3 times.