Around Azeroth: The price of loyalty

Once again, It’s time for the Harvest Festival, where the Alliance and the Horde make long treks to the shrines of their revered but deeply flawed heroes, Uther Lightbringer and Grom Hellscream. After fighting their way through demons and Scourge, the rank and file lay tributes at the monuments, and return to their capital city to receive the grand reward of … a book? A book of really bad poetry? And a food-summoning horn? Pathetic. Here, how about I save some silver, stay here in Ironforge, and just get a drunken dwarf to recite some free verse at me? (Thanks to Boz of <Dark Revelation> on Arygos for the pic!) Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold

It came from the Blog: Pirates’ Day recap

It came from the Blog celebrated Pirates’ Day by running from Orgrimmar to Booty Bay as pirates and then joining Dread Captain DeMeza’s crew. Granted, there really isn’t much to the in-game holiday, but we had a good time making the most of it. Yar! Around 110 or so showed up including Allison Robert, C. Christian Moore and Christian Belt. We got in our pirate costumes, ran to Razor Hill, Crossroads and then on to Ratchet. We then took the boat to Booty Bay and got the Achievement. Thanks to our many higher level characters, the lowbies were protected along the journey. I took a lovely video capturing the 50 or so Tauren Pirates I had on follow only to crash just after getting to Booty Bay. The video is not salvageable, but I may be able to do something with the videos of the beginning and the end… maybe. I was able to get a few screenshots which are in the gallery below. Thanks to all who joined us and stay tuned for the It came from the Blog Brewfest event announcement coming soon!

Around Azeroth: Heart of the wild

The cuteness of a sitting bear, whether virtual or all too real, can almost make you forget that they’re godless killing machines. Almost. A bear smiling at you from the middle of a circle of dead bodies tends to spoil the effect. Maybe if he was wearing a party hat things would be different. (Thanks to Amanda for the screenshot.) Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads with dead gnomes any race at all, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Around Azeroth: The bull by the horns

Thangal of <Black Label Disciples> on Eitrigg is all things to all people. Fiery hands and a snowflake aura, a halo and horns. Is Thangal a master of the art of multi-tasking? Is he the love child of a mage and a succubus? Or is he simply the beneficiary of a few extra talent points? Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads with dead gnomes any race at all, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Around Azeroth: Fear the reaper

Gwinydd of <Rose Thorns> on Bael’gun writes, “I died while doing the Gjalerbron quests in Howling Fjord, and saw the Sepulchral Overseer heading toward me as I found my corpse. The irony of an undead creature, whose job is to create new undead, bearing down on a dead undead was too much to pass up. Can a lich sense a person’s soul hovering beyond the veil? Can their claws reach through and snatch the spirit as it attempts to re-enter the body, spinning it screaming into the void, leaving the physical form to be reanimated to perform the Lich King’s will? A few days later, a priest friend and I went back to finish up the quests, and we took this bad boy down. Intense fight for two clothies. /flex.” Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots

Potential Lt. Governor of Guam is also a hardcore WoW player

Guam is a territory of the United States and has one non-voting member in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s the largest of the Mariana Islands, as well as the most southern island of that grouping. It’s also home to a potential future Lieutenant Governor who is also a serious WoW player. Senator Ray Tenorio wrote GamePolitics.com to say that he would be running for Lt. Governor alongside his friend Senator Eddie Baza Calvo, who is the one running for Governor. He also said that he wanted to let people know that gamers are the same folks who “fight and die for democracy, conduct intricate procedures in professional careers, and, Yes, even make policy.” And while that sounds like a lot of political season rhetoric, the Lietutenant Governor has already established his gamer credentials. Senator Tenorio’s character Paleray is a Dwarf Priest in the Knights of the Mariannas on Silverhand. I’ll save you the trouble of looking up whether he qualifies as “skilled” or “nub.” Not only is he rocking several Hard Mode Achievements out of Ulduar, but he’s an old-school player. Senator Tenorio is a Knight-Lieutenant from the old PvP system. While it wasn’t one of the worst “grindy” titles, it certainly shows that the

New Shaman totems in the expansion

Good news from Kisirani for those who like a little variety in their Shaman classes — she confirms that Dwarf Shaman will indeed get brand new totems to throw down rather than the Draenei or Tauren models in Cataclysm, and hints that all of the Shaman races, past and future, will get a little differentiation in the sticks they stab into the ground. Unfortunately, she also confirms that Dwarven totems aren’t kegs (that right there would have gotten me to reroll as a Dwarven Shammy first thing), but whatever they end up being — my guess is something rock and/or hammer-esque — I’m sure Blizzard’s artists will make them look cool. For Trolls, you have to think they’re going to go voodoo (they’ll probably use the Troll totems already in the game). Orcs, it would have to be something primitive — maybe leather strung across a bone stand or something like that. And of course Draenei already have their own custom totems, and we don’t really have enough of a hold on what the Goblins are like yet (trust me, we don’t — the race I played at BlizzCon was very different from the neutral race we know right now) to think what they’ll have.