You can get to the Argent Tournament grounds by flying there your own self, or hitching a ride from the Argent Champion located in Krasus’ Landing in Dalaran. Whichever way you choose to make your grand entrance, its important to take a nice long tour of the area once you get there.

The road to Champion isn’t too terribly long, and once you get there you become a champion of your home city, representing them in battle. A little esquire, of sorts, will follow you around bearing your standard. It’s all quite fun and cute. Additionally, you get a “____ of <home city> title, like Jesma of Darnassus. Completing quests as a champion of a home city also earns you reputation with that city. If you’re already maxed, you can go champion any of the cities of your faction and earn reputation with capital cities as well.

It’s nice that, in spite of all the new factions introduced in the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, that there is still some love being given to the home towns. I, for one, am really glad I don’t have to go back in do all the low level quests, or do 6000 Runecloth turn-ins in order to gain some standing with the capital cities I’ve been spilling blood and beer for for years!

MS Word isn’t so terribly different from previous words, or any other GUI word processor, for that matter. The main difference is in the layout. Released around the same time as vista, MS Word 2007 is designed to jive with the new windows design. Because of that it has all the glossy buttons, the corner menu that is actually an image, etc etc. It isn’t a bad design, but it takes awhile to get used to. The benefit of the new design is that it brings some of the previously more obscure options to the forefront, like MS Word 2007 templates. For once, I find these things to be useful! Anyhow, if you want to learn more about using the basic features of MS Word 2007 (and finding them, heh) or how to use templates to make it oh-so-much-easier, click one or both of the links below.

Microsoft Word 2007 – Writing a Letter with Manual Formatting

Microsoft Word 2007 – Writing a Letter using a Template

AMD OverDrive offers simple overclocking tools for beginners, and advanced configuration options for those who have cranked a voltage or two in their day. It allows you to adjust settings that are typically only available in the BIOS. For some options, a full reboot is required. But for others, you can adjust and immediately run a stability test to ensure the chosen settings suit your system.

In addition to just overclocking, you also get an extremely detailed report on the status of every component of your system, and it integrates fully with the ATI Catalyst Control Center. Stability tests and an incredibly useful tool called Auto Clocking round out this fully featured overclocking utility, freely available from AMD’s website, and often packaged with motherboards and CPUs.

A little research will inform you that the re-branded Asus Express Gate is in fact just a reconfigured Splashtop Linux. This software is designed to load fast. And I mean, like, blazing fast. Within 5 seconds of pressing the power button on your computer, it loads a teeny tiny mini operating system that grants instant access to the Internet and some files on your PC. In addition to that, a plethora of mini flash games are available in all different genres. 

So what is the purpose of this? I’m not really sure. In a video ad they played it off like it was something that you could do while in a hurry. Like “oh, my computer is off, I’m running out the door, and need to check my email”. Does that happen to you often? I, for one, always have my computer on or in a fast load standby.

Personally the only thing I’ve found use for in this little software feature is the mini-games. Hell yeah. I played Black Jack for like an hour once. Once. To me the whole thing just seems like a big gimmick that Asus implemented to give them a shiny mysterious feature no-one else has. In theory it sounds cool, but if you’re anything like me you’ll probably find it completely worthless in practice.

The old Burning Crusade method of farming Kara for badges and using them to buy Tier 5 equivilent gear is gone. At best, the gear on the conquest vendor serves to suplement and fill in gaps in a gear set already obtained in 25-man Ulduar. It would be one thing if Ulduar 10 at least also dropped Emblems of Conquest, but it drops Valor instead (hey, its an upgrade from heroism).

If you have a few badges to spend at the conquest vendor, you can pick up the new crafting item, Runed Orb, for 10. Other items have untraditionally non-round values, like 19, 38, 58, etc. Perhaps they intend you to be able to buy an item after 1 full clear, 2 full clears, what-have-you. The items available for purchase are:

Belts – 28

Necks – 19

Gloves – 28

Tier 8 Conquest Helm – 58

Tier 8 Conquest Chest – 58

Most people can configure these settings to their taste, if not by choice then by trial and error and luck. But there is a whole panel of Advanced Catalyst Control Center Settings that are much more difficult and sometimes *dangerous* to configure. You can even overclock your video card using the settings available in this panel.

For beginners and advanced users alike, the ATI Catalyst Control Center will help you to customize your video display settings to exactly what you want and need. If you have an ATI card, then you are gimping yourself by not having this amazing tool installed and configured. For further reading and how to configure basic and advanced settings in the ATI CCC, read the following:

How to Use the ATI Catalyst Control Center

ATI Catalyst Control Center Advanced Settings

Courtesy of http://deathknight.info

A month or so back I published the Death Knight Class Changes for Patch 3.1. Now that the patch is out, my thoughts and feelings have changed somewhat. Initially I thought they were “buffing the shit” out of Unholy, and even though I’ve seen little in the way of real “nerfs”, it seems that they buffed it less than they buffed the other classes and specs out there.

Some things that the patch changed:

NO MORE UNHOLY TANKING

I was always skeptical about Unholy tanking anyhow  - It relied too much on high avoidance, which at this stage in the game is usually sacrificed in favor or HP/Armor. In the patch, it was made even less viable as a tanking spec. 

FROST THE NEW HOTNESS DPS SPEC?

Surprisingly, Frost went from “worst DPS spec” to “best DPS spec” over night. I’ve chained Frost Strikes four in a row, getting 8-9k crits on each, followed by a 3-chain of Obliterates with 5-7k crits. The proc buffs built in to Frost spec mean that there are times you can do around 65k damage within 7 seconds. Its mind boggling. Keep in mind, that is SINGLE TARGET. On the AoE side, the spec doesn’t allow you to take improved Death and Decay but does give Howling Blast – an AoE that uses 1 U/1 F and crits for 5-6k. While working it into a rotation can be tricky, combined with Blood Boil and D&D it is detrimental.

BLOOD/FROST TANKING

It’s something of a tossup whether Blood or Frost is the better tanking spec. While Blood offers superior survivability via self-healing (fantastic in 5 and 10 mans) Frost tends to mitigate steady damage and also generate much more threat (better for 25-mans and main-tanking).

Their big and ugly, but the only giants in northrend that will give you a shoulder enchant.

Ok guys, it is truly staggering how often I run into players with unenchanted shoulders who’s only excuse is “I’m not a scribe”. Those are the smarter of the unenchanted shoulder club, because at least they know what an scribe is. But seriously people, there is a super duper easy (and fucking profitable) way to get your goddamn shoulder slot enchanted, even if you’re not a scribe.

The solution to your naked shoulder problem is THE SONS OF HODIR!! These friendly, ugly, and formidable giants will give you a lovely little inscription for your bare naked shoulders – but only if they like you enough. The problem is, they don’t take kindly to people they don’t know, and will probably shove your face 6 feet into the snow if given 2 seconds to think about it. So how do you go about getting your shoulder enchant? READ THE ARTICLES LINKED BELOW!

Getting to Know the Sons of Hodir – Reputation Guide

Sons of Hodir Dailies and Turn-in Items – Relics of Ulduar and Everfrost Chips

There you have it – No excuses anymore! A step-by-step guide to the Sons of Hodir so you can get your very own shoulder enchants! WOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Let it be known that I play World of Warcraft pretty seriously. I’m not one of those girls that wasn’t a gamer, then her boyfriend got her hooked on WoW, and now she is a gamer. I have always been, since playing NES with my older brother and his friends at age 3. WoW wasn’t my first MMO, either. I played a couple before it, like Star Wars: Galaxies, and The Matrix Online. Since playing WoW I havn’t been exclusive to it, either. I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons Online, Tabula Rasa quite seriously, Warhammer Online quite seriously, and a spattering of others both in retail and beta.

I always come back to WoW though. Why? I don’t know. It could just be that, after this many years, WoW is kind of like home. I know it in and out. And theres more to that than just knowing the game. I certainly couldn’t just pick up and play WoW on any server. Community has a lot to do with it too.

My “home” server is Mal’Ganis PvP. MG is the home of Elitist Jerks among other “firsts” guilds (guilds that get first in the world, first in the US, etc etc). We have a very intersting dynamic. High end raiding on Mal’Ganis isn’t for fun, its competitive. Being first is THE most important thing. If your guild is bad, you are bad, your friends are bad, and you will eventually just be pushed off of the server by massive amounts of hate directed your way.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

See, I’ve tried other servers. I spent some time on Dalaran PvE playing Horde with my husband and friends, and even though I have a shiny full epic priest there, I have absolutely ZERO desire to ever go back. The whole reason being that the players there just suck. The top progressed guild on Dalaran is about on par with the worst on Mal’Ganis. The competition and the heckling, name calling, degrading, critisizing, harsh, crude, and overall horrendously negative environment that is my home, Mal’Ganis, incidently fosters a better player. You either step up to standard or you GTFO. And I’ve seen a lot of players and guilds that didn’t cut it do just that.

So yeah, I play WoW, but I play WoW a bit differently than most people.