128 – The Instance: Wrath Of The Gender Reassignments

The Lich King Likes You And Wants To Be Your Friend
As you may or may not have heard, a little change came to World Of Warcraft yesterday, with the launch of a mostly insignificant patch that even has it’s own title – Wrath Of The Lich King. We’ve rarely seen something so small create so much hysteria.

My Bull Wants To Be A Cow
At the Wrath launch event early yesterday, Oli Welsh from Eurogamer got to speak to Blizzard’s Paul Sams and Lee Sparks, who indicated that Blizzard is close to allowing players to go back and reverse decisions made in the character creation process. They added that the charge was intended as a “deterrent” to stop players using the feature all the time, similar to the existing name change and server transfer services.

Even Cowgirls Get Realm Queues
For many players, logging in to play Wrath Of The Lich King for the first time meant enduring something painful for the first time – a queue to get into their realm. Blizzard has a lot of free transfers now available for both US and EU players, and we don’t know if they are going to solve the crowding problem, but if you’re looking for a new home, it might just be Fizzcrank.

Want To Start Over Completely?
Surprisingly, Blizzard opened an all-new realm this week: Grizzly Hills. It’s a PvE (normal)in the US Eastern time zone, and belongs to the Retaliation battlegroup. Before you ask, yes, the Ahn Quiraj gates on Grizzly Hills are closed, and they are not allowing transfers of existing characters into the realm. Ever wondered what it felt like when WoW first went live? Wondering what a realm with only 5 pages on the auction house and ZERO death knights feels like? Here you go.

Here’s Your Random Mount Macro
This could have been the drop of the week, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and the question has been coming in all over the place: How do I get the right mount in version 3 of WoW, what with Northrend not being flyable yet and all that. Answer? Use this macro:

/run if IsMounted then Dismount return end local t if IsFlyableArea then t={7} else t={1,2,5,6,8} end CallCompanion(“MOUNT”,t[random(#t)]) /dismount [mounted]
 * 1) showtooltip Swift Red Wind Rider

Can You Smell What The Lich King Is Cookin’?
You need sites. We has them. WoWInsider’s Wrath 101 Post The WoWHead Complete WOTLK Guide MapWoW’s Northrend Revelation