Although Starprints is still not up yet, I have listed some charms in my Etsy Shop. Rather than doing them on an order-by-order basis, I’m trying to get a bunch done and only sell what I have in stock. My schedule is just so crazy these days! Please leave a comment with any requests on charms not available and I’ll do my best to get some listed.

SHOP NOW!

Tags: cell, charms, etsy, shop

Yesterday, as I’m sure you guys have heard, Blizzard announced the dates for BlizzCon 2008. In a press release they stated:

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans for its third BlizzCon? gaming convention, to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment®’s Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises. In response to the demand to accommodate more attendees, this year’s event has expanded from two convention halls to three.

Tickets should go on sale within the next few weeks. So, I’m curious to see how many of you might be attending. Jon and I are making plans already.

Tags: 2008, blizz con, blizzard, blizzcon, convention

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. We’ve been hard at work on a secret project. True story. Details will be released soonish.

In the meantime, I wanted to share this:

60-Day Pre-Paid WoW Game Card $19.99 @ Circuit City (In-store pickup only).

I personally don’t use game cards because its not worth the hassle but this seems to be a solid deal for those that do.

Tags: Pre-Paid Game Card, WoW

[Moist Cornbread]

Ingredients:
1 cup of Corn Meal
1 cup of Flour
4 tablespoons of Sugar
1/2 teaspoon of Salt
2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 cup of Buttermilk
2 eggs
1/4 cup of Canola Oil
3 tablespoons of Butter (softened)
Cooking Spray

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray pie or 8×8 pan with cooking spray. Combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a medium bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs, canola oil and butter. Quickly stir the buttermilk mix into the cornmeal mix. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out clean.

Tags: cornbread, moist cornbread, recipe

The following is a post I made to our guild’s mesage boards as a response to some of our newer players not knowing rule three of melee fight club:

When you fight, you fight from behind.

The following applies to anyone who is doing melee damage on a mob or raid boss: unless you are the tank, you want to be behind the mob when you attack.

Why? Because a mob cannot parry (or block) your attacks when you hit it from behind.

That’s awesome right?

Yes it is and here’s why: besides the obvious benefit of increasing your personal DPS because your attacks are actually connecting, a parried attack will reduce the mob’s swing timer (effectively increasing its attack speed).

An easier way to think of it is that a parry on a mob will result in a counterattack. This counterattack is directed at the mob’s target (which should be the tank in most situations). Now the tank has his own parries to worry about and probably doesn’t want someone else buffing the boss.

An unlucky string of parries from the mob, whether caused by the tank or from other melee DPS, can result in some nasty damage spikes, putting unnecessary stress on your healers and increasing the risk of your tank biting the dust.

But wait there’s more. There are plenty of raid bosses out there that have a cleave attack that hits everyone in their frontal arc. You don’t want to be affected by this but it’s easy to avoid: just hit it from behind*.

*Behind means behind. Make sure you’re not on top of the boss as your attacks can technically pass through the mob and be counted as frontal hits.

The only exception to this method is when fighting dragons (tails hurt, attack the hind legs) or mobs with a knock-back that require special positioning.

Tags: Do it From Behind, Melee, Parry, Rogues

Since my last post, I’ve written two other articles for WoWInsider, Super Potions and WoW Coasters. I have to also apologize for not updating recently. I’ve been working a lot, raiding a lot..and now a weekly craft. I promise that I’ll get a new recipe posted this weekend though.

Tags: coasters, crafts, perler beads, potions, pots, warcrafts, WoW, wowinsider

I’ve been seriously slacking lately and I apologize. Life has been hectic at home and at the office plus I’ve been spending a lot of time in game playing with my wife and the rest of the Awesomites. Raiding two nights a week has been a blast. Our progression through Kara has been steady (especially considering the fresh recruits we’ve brought on). We just downed Prince Malchezaar last week and are currently discussing a Gruuls run.

I need to get back on the Blogroll Spotlight and I’ve also got a sweet addon to share that I actually haven’t seen featured anywhere else.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of theorycrafting on our guild’s message boards so maybe I’ll recycle a post or two to upload here. I mean uhh.. I’ve got some really awesome stuff I’ve been working on just for you guys.

Stay tuned.

Tags: Prince Malchezaar, specced for awesome, theorycrafting

I wanted to let you guys know that today is my first official post in WoW Insider. I will be writing for the World of WarCrafts column and will be posting new crafts every Thursday.

If anyone has a special in-game item they’d like to see crafted IRL, let me know and I’ll do my best to “git-r-done.”

Tags: column, crafts, warcrafts, WoW Insider, wowinsider

I love tanking. I enjoy the challenge and although some may argue that it isn’t a very rewarding venture, I find it quite satisfying. I’m not sure where the following quote originated but I’ve seen it quite a few times on multiple paladin forums and I think it describes the role in a classy (and cheesy) way:

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
While I draw breath, they shall not perish.
So long as they live, our enemies will fall.
I am defender, protector, guardian.
I am a Paladin.

Yes there are some caveats, soloing is one of them. My lousy dps and extended downtime make solo grinding unbearable. Unless of course I’m doing this:

The other issue I have is that I’m often called upon by others to tank this or that instance and while i’d love to be able to help everyone out (seriously I hate to disappoint even complete strangers and especially fellow guildmates), I just find that I don’t have the time. Weeknights are either spent raiding, preparing for said raiding, or doing dailies (i’d like to have an epic roflcopter one of these days not to mention the steep cost of pots and repair bills). I can get on about twice during the day on weekends while Jon 3.0 goes down for his nap(s), but I don’t commit to anything because when he wakes up and yell’s “daddy!”, the group I’m in is going to be down a tank.

The underlying problem here is that there aren’t enough tanks to go around. We are a rare commodity even with 3 viable tank-capable classes. In the solo-centric pre-endgame of WoW, speccing as tank is just an exercise in masochism. I know that the fact that I reside on a PVP Server doesn’t really help matters, but I really believe that if I were to mosey on over to a PVE or even a RP-PVE realm, that I’d still see the LFG and trade channels lit up w/ LF1M tank for XX then GTG.

Blizzard is clearly aware of this and is developing an entirely new class to try to fill the void. I just hope that they implement the Death Knight in such a way that it doesn’t penalize you for making the choice to roll any of the other tanking classes.They’ve claimed that the DK will be a tank/dps hybrid that uses a zwei-hander instead of sword and board. As long as they retain the solid balance that we currently have between warriors, paladins and druids with the implementation of the Death Knght then there shouldn’t be any issue. If you make the DK too strong as a tank then our other tanks will lose popularity, make them too weak and we’ll be in the same boat we’re in now as people will prefer to spec for dps.

Honestly, I just want an effective way to provide high dps while our talents are tied up in the tanking tree (WTB catform imo).

Tags: Demon Hunter Supplicants, Main Tank, Paladin AOE, Pally, Tankadin, tanking

I wanted to fill you guys in on a couple of things.. and apologize for not updating lately. I’ve joined the WoWInsider team and will be writing the weekly World of Warcrafts column. Jon and I have also changed guilds, again. We’ve joined Specced for Awesome. Jon convinced them that the existing odd-shaped broccoli tabard needed to go and it was replaced with an uber cute octopus. So I designed a logo for our home page based on our new 8-legged friend.

Tags: specced for awesome, update, warcrafts, wowinsider