This review of the World of Warcraft: Dawn of the Aspects: Part 4 novel by Richard Knaak is of the spoiler-free variety. Check out the entire Blizzard catalog in our Extensive Extended Universe post.

Before diving into the review proper, it’s important to note that Blizzard is releasing this book in a new fashion. Knaak’s latest work in the World of Warcraft universe will trickle out over the next few months in five installments. Each ringing up at $1.99, effectively costing more for those that purchase the full set. The serialized eBook is currently scheduled to wrap up in mid June. As such, this review will be concise.

Review of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Action packed, it’s simply the most concise way to articulate Part 4 of this eBook experiment. Knaak has been saving his combat chops for this stretch of the five-part novel. It’s been an agonizing wait till this point, but the plot and related subplots finally drive forward with reckless abandon. Kalecgos hidden in the mind of Malygos, and the rest of the future Aspects and other sentient proto dragons set out to confront the behemoth Father of Dragons known as Galakrond. Regardless of his immense size and mutation, the evolving proto dragons understand that his hunger and growing undead army will bring about their extinction in short order.

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WoW: Memories features wacky, entertaining and enduring stories from the world’s most popular subscription-based MMOG.

In 2009 I ended my hardcore raiding ways in World of Warcraft. My gaming career during that can easily be summed up in two words, guild hopping.  Since the Year of the Ox began I had been through a raiding member of four guilds, and another while everyone was still leveling.  To me, the act of switching that often is sacrilege, but fleeting guild experiences have become the norm.  With Wrath of the Lich King’s introduction of 10- and 25-man raids, an easier badge system, and then the Dungeon Finder, guilds had become neigh replaceable by PUGs.  The changes lead me to experience the gauntlet of raid leader types since the Alliance and the Horde decided to take the Lich King’s threat head on.  From the best-friend to the belittling asshole, I dealt with them all in 2009.  The main concern is that the best, and who is the most fun to play with tend to be two different answers.

Without question the most productive guild I had been a part during 2009 was the last of them.  We cleared ICC 25-man the second day, the guild dropped ToGC like it was Naxxramas and TotT was defeated with alts. Everyone was geared out the wazoo – I recall only being invited because two members vouched for me – with the best enchants, full epic gems and Rawr checking all required.  By required I don’t mean you would be sat, but kicked.  The GM and officers are nowhere near lenient, opting to outright kick players who fall behind in the slightest.  The guild demands perfection, something I actually prefer, but the raid leader I’ve largely dealt with wore on me. Quickly. I hadn’t screwed up, but the constant stream of swears, belittling of other members and his power complex wore on me. I knew it was burning me out.  My only enjoyment became the competitive nature among the rogues and the progression itself. Not from the guild atmosphere. Continue Reading

In an incredibly rare move, Blizzard Entertainment announced moments ago that the company will be selling off additional Collector’s Editions of the latest World of Warcraft expansion. The company announced on its official blog that players can grab one of the few remaining copies of the CE from the Blizzard Store on a first-come, first-served basis.

@Warcraft WTS MoP CE $69.99

The physical Collector’s Edition includes everything in the Digital Deluxe version and then some. The exclusive art book, behind-the-scenes DVD, soundtrack and mouse pad are all packed in with the codes for in-game goodies.

Blizzard Entertainment did not detail why there are extra copies in the warehouse, but one could easily summarize that the physical CE didn’t sell as well as the company projected.

I’ve had a mixed relationship with pet battles. It’s a fun mini-game, but I’d rather not spend too much time grinding out battles to level my pets and progress in the system. Instead, I’d much rather pay for some pre-leveled pets to get to some of that end-game pet battle content. Much to my disappointment, I discovered that the level 25 Terrible Turnip that I dropped 10,000 gold on couldn’t be added to my journal because I didn’t have an existing level 25 pet in my journal. There was nothing in the UI to suggest that this was the case, just some big fat error text after the fact. The design intent is clear (don’t buy your way to victory), but the experience itself was pretty frustrating.

The question that immediately came to my mind after this epic failure was: “With this restriction in place, why can I trade a level 25 pet from most sources, but not from wild pet battles?” happened pretty late in the Mists of Pandaria beta because the developers felt that “the option to buy these pets on the AH would take away from the exploration/collection gameplay of the system.” The new Pandaren elemental spirits and raid pets being tradable kind of runs against that philosophy, so what is the right way forward? What risk is there in opening up the trading of wild pets?

For one thing, it seems that (currently) all pets that anybody might eventually trade start at level 1. It isn’t very difficult or time-consuming to catch wild pets, and you can imagine that trained pets from other sources that started at level 1 would be less expensive if you could get an equally effective pet for a hundred gold that took someone 3 minutes to produce instead of many hours to train. But is that really that big of a drawback? Do we really want people to only be able to sell their hard-trained pets? Continue Reading