I may have been joking around last night when I said there is no cow level on the Sunwell Island, either. But come to think of it, I find it highly unfair - and racist - that there are dungeons in World of Warcraft where we can slaughter all the playable races - gnomes (first and foremost), orcs, humans, trolls, elves, dwarves, undead, even a generous amount of draenei down in Auchenai Crypts. All... except for one. Cows Tauren. And so I dare ask, why?!

Why isn't there any dungeon themed around the tauren way of life and death, filled with big hairy cows just waiting to be barbecued? And don't give me any "oh, but there are some in BFD" bullcrap (no pun intented), because that's hardly a tauren dungeon. So the next question would be - where could such a dungeon be located?

Well, I'm no expert in Horde-side geography, but one place in particular comes to mind: those desolate cliffs just West of Mulgore, with all sorts of ruins as you fly over them. How about an intricate network of caves hidden up there, with a secluded clan of tauren plotting to take over the world of Warcraft, by invoking some big nasty spirits through excessive use of narcotics. Or whatever narrative pretext Blizzard would come up with. Anything's fine, really, just as long as we get to kill us some damn cows.

Surely, you know about the upcoming WoW patch 2.4 (to some extent), and unsurprisingly enough, there is still no cow level listed in the release notes. There is, however, a new zone dedicated to high-end raiding, dungeoning and wiping, called Sunwell Island - complete with a whole new reputation associated with the new NPC hub there, called the Shattered Sun Offensive. Because eeeeverybody loves to grind reputation from those god damn daily quests!

The island's main attraction will naturally be Sunwell Plateau, a raid dungeon inhabited by the Burning Legion, where everybody will be welcome to intrude, but very few will live to tell what's inside. Think of it as the next Black Temple, and think just how many players make it even that far... Right, so much for me ever seeing the end of it.

Luckily, there will also be a five-man dungeon on Sunwell Island, called the Master's Magister's Terrace. This is where the rest of us sinners will go hunting for epix, either in normal or in heroic mode. That's right, epic loot will drop even in normal mode, but only from the final boss - and don't expect anything better than low-level Karazhan stuff. In heroic mode, however, every boss will drop epix, and if you manage to kill the final one, the lewt will rival in quality and shinyness with Prince Malchezzar's treasures from Kara.

If you want to learn more about Sunwell Plateau and Magister's Terrace, as well as other changes comin in 2.4, be sure to listen / read the transcript of BlizzCast Episode 1. And here are some pictures from Sunwell Island to go with that. Nice boat!

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Sunwell Dungeons In 2.4'...

Ah, Siege Tanks! Those majestic war machines that I used to love so much in the good ol' days of Dune II, and later in the first Starcraft... Right until I got totally owned by a pitiful bunch of flying thingies pissing in the wind, and down on my ironically sieged tanks. As cool as they may look, sound and feel, I guess that Siege Tanks will - and should - forever remain a limited tool of descruction, crippled on the battlefield by their weak points, unless properly backed up by other units.

The same will generally hold true for the terrans' Siege Tanks in Starcraft 2, as well, now that the blues have updated the game's website with info about the new Crucio Siege Tank. So... what exactly is new, you ask? Well, other than the expected visual update, this about sums it up:

"The Crucio has been designed for increased survivability with an enlarged, reinforced turret and hull. The new turret layout also features an upgraded assault-mode armament package so that the Crucio can fend for itself more successfully in an open battlefield. Force deployment costs for the Crucio have increased over the older Arclite, but the increased versatility of the powerful new siege tank more than compensates for the additional expense."

There be more pics, clips and such on the Starcraft 2 website, if you can be bothered.

It won't matter if you're prepared or not, anymore, when the next World of Warcraft expansion goes live. Unlike Illidan - who is rather exclusivist with allowing guests to visit and wipe in his shiny Black Temple, the Lich King Arthas will be a lot more user-friendly, it seems. That's not to say that every casual guild will be able to melt his face, and his frozen throne along with him; just that all the players will be able to "interact" with Arthas from the get-go.

That interview with Tigole we mentioned a few days ago was published in full by CVG, and his final words shed some light on what kind of "interaction" awaits us:

"We're giving all players going into the expansion interaction with Arthas. We were too protective of Illidan [the arch villain in The Burning Crusade] making sure we didn't waste the opportunity, so now you're interacting with him straight away.

You're talking to him, having these moments with him (ed. - that sounded so gay), so you don't have to be a raider to see him. We're also having a Caverns of Time mission - The Culling from Warcraft III - so that you can go back and play alongside Arthas when he was shiny and good, when you're burning Stratholme."

Burning Stratholme? Yaaay, I just LOVE to burn things!

There's more to wiping than just PvE dungeons and raid bosses: when it comes to PvP, the question from our first poll - "Are you a wiper, or a whipee?" - takes a whole new meaning. It's wipe or be wiped, and in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, we'll have an entire zone with nothing but PvP slaughtering, called Lake Wintergrasp. It's a frozen area located to the west of The Dragonblight region, inhabited by taunka - a lost tauren race - at a settlement named Icemist Village (check the Northrend map).

"No PvE quests. No dungeons. Just raw PvP, siege weapons and building destruction." That's how Wintergrasp lake is described in the latest issue of the PC Zone magazine, in which lead designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) talks about some of the zones in Northrend. You can read more about the others over on Blizzplanet.

Sounds to me like the good old days of Southshore / Tarren Mill world PvP'ing are back with a vengeance. Blood will flow freeze, arrrrrr!

Aside from being a couple of hopeless WoW addicts, we also happen to have a sweet spot for the Japanese visual subculture - so, for our first "official news", we turn over to Blizzplanet, who revealed that Tokyopop will publish a new manga book by Keith R.A. DeCandido, based on the Starcraft franchise. No title or other details have been announced so far, only an estimated release date set for August 2008.

This news comes in addition to the Warcraft: Dragons of Outland manga planned for March 2009, which was revealed in the pages of the recently released Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy Ultimate Edition collection. As its title obviously implies, this new Warcraft manga will be based on some Outland'ish events from The Burning Crusade expansion, and it's being written by the same dude, Richard A. Knaak.


If only Warcraft had more lolis, we might actually look forward to this.

Hi, my name is Puchiko and I'm a wipe'oholic. It's been over three months minutes since I last wiped - which, by the way, is quite an acomplishment on my behalf. Some say it's always my fault... others... simply /nod. Me, I like to think of wiping as a necessary learning process in World of Warcraft, and a gratifying sado-masochistic experience at the same time. To that end, wiping - much like sex - is best enjoyed in groups of five or more (or so I heard), and it takes years and years of bloody practice, in order to master the fine art of wiping!

So, following a string of thoughts more or less similar to the above babble, the resident drunken boomkin Lilium made me stitch up this web-thingie called Wipefest, where skilled corpse-runners and noobs alike will hopefully discover and learn to appreciate the beauty of wiping, both in game and in real life, by ways of orally administering ample amounts of booze. Various other WoW-related or random topics will also be brought under discussion, and if all else fails, the occasional videos streamed from our little-sister website TVkon may also keep you entertained for a couple of minutes.

P.S. You may have noticed that "craftizan.com" domain in the address bar... yeah, that's a different story. One which we - as in I - am still working on. You should find it very useful though, if you're into crafting, trading and other gold-making schemes; so stick around.