95 – The Instance: 'BOOP!'

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Blizzard Takes Down Peons4Hire, You’ll Now Have To Hire Someone Else To Hack Accounts And Spam Everyone
According to a very specific posting at VirtuallyBlind.com, Blizzard reached a settlement with the holding company of Peons4Hire – one of the groups that spams you in game with their gold sales and powerleveling scams – putting an end to the lawsuit that was brought by Blizzard in May of 2007. The settlement completely eliminates Peons4Hire, prevents them from participating in any further activities that involve WoW, and sets the stage for a lot of other scam-artist companies to bite the dust.

Wowhead Pulls Further Ahead, Wow!
Admin Miyari announced some serious improvements to Wowhead on Friday, and got the attention of the WoW community with pretty colors. -All comments throughout the site will now feature information of which patch was active when a comment was made. -all recipes listed in Spells > Professions > Alchemy will list ‘Discovery’ under the ‘Source’ tab. -while not exactly an alchemist-only feature, the Items > Consumables > Elixirs category now features subcategories for Battle and Guardian Elixirs. -Every pet skill page (such as Bite (Rank 1), Gore (Rank 9), Furious Howl (Rank 3), etc.) will now feature a list of every pet species that can learn the skill.

The 2.4 Changes Are Rolling In
This week, we’ve seen post after post by various Blizzard-types fessing up to details of the forthcoming patch 2.4, AKA the Sunwell Plateau patch. The list is getting long: -And there was much rejoicing, Blizzard is lifting diminishing returns on honor gains in BGs. -Enchanters will be able to split Void Crystals into two Large Prismatic Shards. -Spell Haste will now reduce the global cooldown on spells. -Tanks are getting some improvements – both for Feral Droods and Protection Warriors. -Just for Scott Johnson, there will be a new fishing daily quest. -The cost of re-specc’ing is going down again. -Don’t forget, this is the patch where warlocks will now be able to summon party members INTO instances. That also includes all of Netherstorm!

Starcraft MMO In The Works?
It’s not the freshest of rumors, but yet another piece of evidence pointing to Starcraft being the setting for Blizzard’s “next generation MMO” surfaced this week. This one is from a company Chinese business news service that said “the first foreign online game to be operated by Netease, which used to rely on independent R&D, will be Starcraft Online, developed by US-based Blizzard.” No confirmation thus far from Netease or Blizzard.

Town Cryer
Jamdori from Lighting Hoof writes:

This may be the nerd in me talking, but I thought it would be awesome if there was a Lord of the Rings instance. You would start in the shire where you would collect your quests, and certain parts would include saving all the elves in Rivendale, protecting Gondor, Protecting Rohan, going through Moria, standing against the orcs at Helms Deep, ect. Just thinking about this makes the hair on my back stick up, what do you guys think about this?

Morderin from Earthen Ring writes:

In a couple of months I will be headed to Thailand for a few weeks. I am assuming that it will be possible for me to connect to the US servers from Thailand. If that assumption is true do I need to be concerned that Blizzard may think I suddenly signed up for a leveling service or gold farming service? If that is a risk, what should I do to indicate that I am in Bangkok and actually playing, I would hate to be banned and I do not know if I could hold-out for three weeks not playing WOW.

Get More Bang For No Buck With GankBang
Most everone knows about a previous Drop Of The Week – WowJutsu. It’s a site that pulls boss drops from equipped gear on characters in the armory and attempts to rank guilds on their raiding progression. Well get ready to take your ego to a whole new level, with GankBang. GankBang also uses the WoW armory, but rather than cross referencing the characters with their guilds, it cross references them with each other! Ever wanted to know which Shadow Priest has the most health on your realm? GankBang.