69 - The Instance: "Second time's the charm"

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Attune You Can’t Get Out Of Your Head
Blizzard CM Tigole just announced that the Serpentshrine Keep and Tempest Keep: The Eye raids will no longer require any attunement:

“After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).

We’re listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.”

Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)  (Please note: This change will go live later today — it’s not yet active)”

Patch 2.1.2 has arrived!
Full patch notes on The Instance Forums The highlights, as far as we know: -The big one is Blizzard’s Final Final Answer to the PvP trinkets: All Insignias of the Alliance and of the Horde will now be the same, period. They will all now dispel movement impairing effects, and that’s it. (stuns, snares and fears) -For Rogues and Warriors, the 2.1 change to sword specialization extra attacks coming in yellow damage and resetting your swing time have been reverted to white damage. -Shamans are getting a little improvement to Focused Mind (which is their ability that shortens the duration of interrupt debuffs). -Hyjal and (heroic) Sethekk Halls have been nerfed. Too many mobs, too many waves, so now hopefully, fewer wipes dues to the sheer duration of things in there. -There are a lot of bug fixes. We highly recommend that players read the full list. -The Arena and Honor Season 2 stuff that we talked about last week are now in effect.

Blizzcon Sold Out!
After only three days of available tickets to Blizzcon, Blizzard announced that they had sold all available passes.

The New York Times Goes To China, Finds Farmers Of Gold
This is a very nicely written article, really gets you into the gold farming lifestyle for the Chinese laborors who persue it.

Meanwhile, NotAddicted.Com has an interview with an American gold farming company. On June 11, all 100 of his farming accounts were banned by Blizzard.

The MMO-Champion Arena Calculator
So, you’re playing Arena PvP every week, and accumulating points, and wonder “how do they decide my rating?” Wonder no more. This handy little tool allows you to convert rating into points, and vice versa. No more question about what rating you’ll need to get a certain number of points. The calculator tells all.

See – the relationship between points and rating is difficult. It’s a formula that plots a curve that results in a strong increase in points per rating in the range of 1500-2300, but not much change below or above that range. Which leads to the question, “how do they calculate my rating?” This tool cannot tell you that, it’s just a converter between rating and points. But you should know that your Arena rating is variable, based on the rating of your opponents. Beat higher rated opponents, and your rating improves more.