152 – The Instance: Pbrlankt Phone Call

Nothing Makes You Want To Play Horde Like Playing Alliance
Blizzard did nothing less than knock our socks off this week with the completely unanticipated announcement that they are working on a change to World Of Warcraft that would allow you to change the faction of your character, for a fee. One of our favorite Blizzard employees of all time, Danielle AKA Nathaera said, “We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it. “

WoW Engineers To Get A Mountain Of Changes
Blizzard poster Zarhym brought the pain this week with an epic statement about changes coming to everyone’s favorite crafting profession. We couldn’t possibly do it justice here, but we’ve got a link in our show notes to the full monty.

Warlocks Set To Make A Comeback
In their latest Q&A published to the World Of Warcraft official site and blog, Blizzard Lead Dev Greg Street talked about Warlocks, acknowledging their decline over the last couple of years, and pointed to changes coming for the dark caster class.

Noticing that he has now talked at great length about all-but-one of the caster DPS types in the game, Ghostcrawler also jumped into a community thread on the forums and did a less-formal Q&A about shadow priests.

2-person Arena Teams Are Back
Blizzard Community Manager Bornakk gave it up this week, saying in a post on the official forums, “After further consideration, and after hearing from many players, we are going to change how we approach the 2vs.2 arena bracket in Arena Season 7. We still think the 3vs.3 and 5vs.5 brackets will ultimately offer the best play experience, especially for very competitive gamers for whom game class balance issues are most noticeable. However, we recognize that many players just prefer to play in the vs. 2 bracket and will miss the chance to earn the current season’s gear. Therefore, we are going to still allow the 2vs.2 bracket to grant access to the current season of gear with three important exceptions: the current season’s weapons will not be available for purchase, the current season’s shoulder armor will not be available for purchase, and players will not qualify for the Gladiator title/rewards unless you earn the appropriate rating in the 3vs.3 or 5vs.5 bracket. We look forward to the changes in the next major content patch and hope to have a great next Arena Season.”

Cataclysm?
According to several sources who apparently spend a lot of time looking for this kind of stuff, Blizzard locked down the name “Cataclysm” this week as a registered trademark, and probably obtained the domain name “wowcataclysm.com”, among others. This led to all manner of speculation on what they could be doing with that word.

Town Cryer
Munhel from the Kael’Thas realm writes: I’ve been playing WoW for some time but just recently started raiding seriously and I’m encountering a gear choice conundrum. I have a few iLevel 213 pieces and I’ll most likely have the chance to roll on some tier tokens in the near future. The problem comes from the fact that some of the 213 stuff I’m already wearing seems comparable or better to the tier gear and of course it’s in tier gear slots (chest, legs, etc…). Do you guys always choose tier over drop for the additional tier bonuses? Do you take the tier tokens but not equip the gear until you’ve gotten enough for a bonus?

Drop Of The Week
Just One Skin Ain’t Enough! The best documentary on gamers like you… that you’ve never seen – Second Skin is finally getting released in select theaters and on DVD in August.