If you have spent anytime at all in the battlegrounds especially Alterac Valley you will have noticed the consistent number of players who AFK (Away from Keyboard) and not participating to help their side try to win the battle. The issue of AFK players has been a sore subject for many World of Warcraft battlegrounds players for quite some time.

Many times within Alterac Valley you can see at any given time from 3 to as many as 10 or more players who are simply sitting within the cave on either side or somewhere else on the map. The lost production of even a few players can make the difference between a win and loss in the battlegrounds. The worst part of this whole situation it seems that the same players are seemingly in almost every battleground doing the same thing.

The frustrating part of this situation is that these players are receiving honor based on the hard work of others are able to obtain enough points on any given day to gear their characters with epics they so obviously do not deserve.

Blizzard last year implemented a report player AFK option into the battlegrounds system, but this seems to be only a minor deterrent as it takes several players to take the time to find and report these players for them to lose any chance of receiving honor in the battleground; and how many of us have time to do this on a consitent basis in the battlegrounds?

One thing that should be done within the battlegrounds system to discourage this practice would be the implementation of Bans to those players who are reported excessively. These bans could be something similar to a one week ban from the battlegrounds for the first offense to a permanent ban for repeat offenders.

It is simply not fair that players such as this are allowed to receive epic level gear when so many people are legitametely putting in the hours and effort needed to get the epic pvp gear from the battlegrounds. Blizzard needs to seriously consider the implementation of a stronger battlegrounds AFK policy to help weed out those who are simply taking advantage of the hard work of others.

One of the issues that seems to be an issue on both sides is how to win in certain battlegrounds. Many people who are newer to the game do not seem to understand how to turn a hard fought battle into a quick win or even a much easier one. Eye of the Storm seems to be a constant issue for many of us. It seems we either get in a group that absolutely has no idea what makes you win or the battle is long and protracted because neither side understands what gives either side the win.

Lets take flag caps for example: Are these worth the effort? Yes they are if you have a stalemate going on towers or if you have a tower advantage, but they should by no means be the focus of the match. Yes the arguement is that they give 100 points to the team that controls them and is able to capture them at their controlled bases, but if you have a 3 to 1 tower advantage you will win the match even if the other team is continuously controlling the center. This is because controlling towers gives more points at a quicker pace then can be received by controlling the center when down bases.

One way to really stop a team who is focused on the center only is to make a large movement against their bases or base if you have the advantage. This will normally shift their focus and then your team can either gain the center while maintaining the base advantage you have or you can simply go for control of all 4 towers which is in most cases game over for the opposing team.

Another thing that seems to be a forgotten art in any battleground is the defense of controlled towers. Yes it only takes one person or in some Eye of the Storms two people to guard a tower and call out incoming enemies so that the rest of the team can send some to help fend off an all out attack, but it is important none the less.

In many of the EOTS we have used a hunter, healer, rogue combo to effectively maintain control of the center as well when there is a stalemate on towers. The hunter lays down freezing traps to slow the movement of the opposing team towards the center and then uses dps of the rogue, hunter with a healer maintaining their health levels to push back most attempts on the center. While the center is controlled by these 3 a 4th team member normally a shaman runs the capped flag back and forth to the defended bases.

There are a few ways to win in EOTS, but the easiest way to win any battleground is to effectively communicate and work together as a team. Those who go it alone not only let themselves down, but the rest of the team as well.

I cannot remember how many times I have heard this from people who have level 70 characters. This is the same question you receive when they ask you to borrow money for their flying mount and when you ask them how much they need yet they give you the answer of “1,000 gold.” At this point my mouth just drops open and I ask the all to important and in their mind dumb question: What are your professions?

Most of the time I get a standard reply of they are mining or herbalism or some other money making profession, but that they are low level. This just puts me in awe of these people. Some even go so far as to say, “Oh I dont see a need to level my professions others are doing it and I can buy from them.” NO you can’t you do not have any money is my answer.

The fact of the matter is that if you want to be able to pay for your riding and flying mounts and not to mention repairs, gear and other things within the game you simply must level your professions. Now I know from experience that some professions are simply cash hogs to level. Take enchanting, tailoring and engineeriing for example. All are great professions with fun aspects to them and some very, very beneficial items that can be made or used to enchant your gear or others, but they do require an extreme amount of gold to level. These professions excluded the others are cash cows when leveled as you level your character.

Take mining and herbalism for example. On every server I have a character on these two professions have made me thousands of gold from the time I started leveling them. No you will not sell copper ore for 20 gold a stack like you would adamantite, well at least not on my servers, but you will be able to most likely get 3 gold per stack on most servers and if you are leveling your professions as you go you will be selling several of these stacks at a time in the auction house. Almost from the beginning my characters have between 30 and 60 gold on them at all times just from leveling their professions up and selling the excess ore, herbs and potions.

I have no problems with loaning guild mates money, but I do have a problem when I know that they honestly are not going to make any effort to level their professions to have the ability to pay their loan back.

So if you honestly want to have the money you need for that epic riding mount at 60 or your epic flying mount at 70 then you need to level your professions. They do help you make gold in World of Warcraft and you will not look like quite the beggar you appear to be if you ask a guild mate for 300 gold towards your flying mount instead of all the money needed to purchase it.

Ok so we all know what this most likely means. Right? Well for those of you who do not this is the first sign that the newest patch change is coming to a server near you. It could happen as soon as tomorrow and when you log on to your WOW account tomorrow you may be welcomed with the news of a patch 2.4.2 update and all its awaited changes.

I know many of us are excited to have these changes implemented soon since there are going to be many new and welcome changes. View the latest patch notes from WOW. As soon as we know more about the exact details of the newest patch we will post them. However, in the past the patch notes posted on the Public Test Realm Patch Notes are almost 100% what we will receive when the patch goes live. So look for more about the latest patch as soon as we have the information.

World of warcraft released the upcoming patch notes and some of the changes are going to be welcome by many players. One of the most welcome changes will be to the arena point calculations. One of the issues that many players have complained about is the practice of slot selling. This is where a lower rated player buys a slot on a higher rated team and receives arena points at the end of each week based on the rating of the team.

Under the current system a team could sell a slot to a player for a set amount of gold. This amount paid to the team would allow the player to stay on the team roster for a period of one week and particpate in at least one third of the teams matches. This would qualify the player to receive the weekly arena points based on the teams current rating and thus lowering the amount of time needed for a player to gear up to the current seasons armor by a large amount. So for example if a teams rating is 1850 and the new members personal rating is only 1400 they would receive a significant boost at the end of the week in the number of arena points they would receive.

Under the current system the player who bought their spot would receive:

However with the upcoming changes any player on a team whose personal rating is 150 points or more below that of their team will receive points based on their personal rating and not that of the team. This will be a significant reduction in the amount of points received as shown in the calculation image below taken from the Arena Point calculater on World of Warcrafts armory site.

New point calculation:

With this change the points that a player receives will be reduced by 392. This is a huge change to the current system and will force many players to actually work on their personal rating and team ratings to achieve the higher weekly points reward that comes with a higher team rating. By making this new and welcome change WOW will create a more even advancement system for everyone. While yes there will always be elite teams and players this newchange will allow the rest of us to have a more even advantage at receiving our gear upgrades at the same pace as those that pay to upgrade theirs quickly.

If you play in the battlegrounds on a regular basis this is a question you see on both sides: Ally and Horde. It seems that many players have either forgotten how to win in Alterac Valley or simply do not understand the dynamics of the strategy involved in completing a winning campaign.

In the old days the battle to win Alterac Valley was a race to see who could kill the others general first. Some times one side would throw in a monkey wrench and turn the battleground into a long protracted turtle that could last for hours. I was involved in a few battlegrounds that lasted as long as five hours and have heard of others that went much longer.

With patch 2.3 all this changed with the introduction of reinforcements limited to 600 total for each side. The idea was to make the matches shorter and more strategy based. Each side is able to lower the number of reinforcements of the opposing team by completing certain objectives that remove reinforcements and offer bonus honor to the faction that completes the goal.

For example each bunker captured is worth 63 bonus honor and removes one npc from the defending Generals defense team. In addition each bunker removes 50 reinforcements from the opposing side with Balinda and Galv each counting for 100 off the opposing teams total. Teams can further improve their position by gaining control of the mines which add reinforcements from the grave yards at a much faster rate.

This is where strategy on both sides comes into play. The team that best defends the bunkers they take for their faction and slows the advance of the opposing team will win the battle in most cases. The problem many people are having in the battlegrounds is not realizing that these objectives are extremely important.

When Alterac Valley begins 10 players should plan to begin the defense of their faction at one of two choke points that best allow them to slow down the advance of the opposing team. For the Horde the best choke point is located at Ice Blood Grave Yard. The advantage of playing defense at this point is that all Ally members must come past this point to get to the southern part of the map. It also allows the Horde to have reinforcements quickly by using the grave yard located within on a few yards to replinish their defense quickly.

The Alliance can begin their best defense at the Ice Wing Bunker and keep the advance of the Horde slowed down until they are pushed back to Storm Pike Grave Yard and begin a prolonged defense at this grave yard. The only way for Horde to gain access to the base is to make a hard and treacherous push across the bridge which is much better defended by the archers of the alliance then can be accomplished by the horde archers.

The error that is made by both sides all to often is failing to guard their offensive objectives. What seems to happen in most instances is that once a bunker flag is started on its timer many of the players simply leave believing that their job is done and all will be well. Unfortunately this is not always the case. If either side is paying attention either through the use of their maps or by addons such as Deadly Boss Mod they can effectively stop the opposing side from reaching their objectives fast enough or even in many cases completely keep them from acheiving them at all.

I have been in Alterac Valley campaigns where we simply could not get anyone to stay to help defend so I would be left defending a bunker. Sometimes things would work out, but all to often a group of opposing players would come in and make short work of my meager defense.

Bunkers are important, but so are strategic grave yards. For the Allies the first grave yard to capture is going to be Snowfall Grave Yard. This gives them a forward respawn point with which to attack Galv and ultimately their next objectives. The Horde’s first grave yard needs to be Stone Hearth Grave Yard and should be well defended by at least 2 or 3 players until this grave yard is captured. A sound strategy for the allies is to keep the horde from gaining access to this grave yard as it forces them to many times respawn after a death as far south as Frostwolf Grave Yard depending on well the allies have been at gaining their offensive objectives. One final way to a quick and easy victory is for a team of 5 stealth players to move quickly to the opposing sides base and ninja their bunkers within their base along with the base grave yard. A good team makeup is to have at least 2 druids who can help with healing in the event that a battle to retake the bunkers ensues. Remember to take them one bunker at a time to make sure you capture the bunker and do not have to do the same job twice which can delay your teams victory or even cause its defeat.

To win in Alterac Valley these days you have to have a sound strategy and a well balanced defense and offense. To much defense on either side and the whole battle will be prolonged by an extremely long time which has the added effect of reducing the overall honor you can earn within an hour. The arguement is that you gain more honor from pvp with the enemy, however, if you were to play 4 AV’s with good strategy within an hour you could make as much as 2000 or more honor from bonus and kills. The arguement by those loving turtles as they are called is that they can come out of this single Alterac Valley with close to 1000 honor points. The problem with this theory is that even with a reinforcement battle the battleground will last as long as an hour or more thus reducing your total honor that you can make. Of course this type of battleground does make for some serious fun for those that love the pvp aspect of the battlegrounds.

No matter the route you decide to take in the battlegrounds your strategy will ultimately decide whether your side is victorious or not. Remember good sound strategy and taking the time to make sure your objectives are actually captured before moving on will win the match for your side.

Information being leaked out about the upcoming season 4 arena is showing that Blizzard is no longer making it very easy to obtain gear from the newest season. Based on the proposed requirements for obtaining this new gear it is easy to conclude that most players will not see the use of this gear anytime in the near future.

The problem that has been seen by many hardcore arena enthusiasts is that the ease of which tier level equivalant gear has been made available to the masses has made the game somewhat boring. In the days before the so called welfare epics it was a matter of pride to be able to show off your epics you obtained from dungeons. Now with the ease of which Blizzard made the previous arena gear available to everyone the thrill of having a few epics is being replaced with resentment that everyone looks basically the same.

Season 4 is being designed to allow only an elite few hardcore arena participants to achieve essentially Tier 7 equivalant gear. The new personal ratings being linked to each piece will make the casual arena players such as myself and others take a whole new look at whether putting in the time and effort to obtain these new personal ratings will be worth our many hours of dedication that will be needed.

With these new requirements you will most likely see a shift back towards the days before Burning Crusade when Raids and Instances reigned supreme. Blizzards intent with arenas was never to make all players essentially equivalent in gear and looks. In fact the arenas were added for the enjoyment of those who took their pvp seriously. However, the current system has allowed almost anyone who wanted to obtain epic level gear an easy alternative to grinding for hours in dungeons hoping that they would obtain an epic level piece of gear for their character.

The new changes are actually a good thing for the world of warcraft world. While yes Blizzard’s intention when setting welfare epics was to help those wishing to compete in arenas have a fair chance it has had some unforeseen consequences that have made the game old and stale.

I for one look forward to seeing people using different gear and creating a look all their own. I can say that seeing the same pvp gear on all players is getting quite old and a change back to the old is not that bad of an idea.

One on going question from many newcomers to World of Warcraft and even many veterans for that fact is how to make gold. Many people complain day in and day out about how they are unable to make enough gold for their epic riding mounts let alone their normal and epic flying mount. Making money in WOW is probably one of the easiest things we can do if we use our professions wisely and the addons that are available to us.

Probably the one money maker we overlook the most is our professions. While on many servers some professions just cannot make money even at the highest levels others are simply cash cows. For example on many servers professions such as engineering and even enchanting these days are not making much revenue for those of us that have spent the time leveling them up. One of the reasons for this is that many others do not appreciate the time involved and even expense of obtaining the highest levels of these professions. Many other players who simply will not take the time to level their professions believe that they should receieve items and enchants from some of these professions for little to nothing. This could not be further from the truth, it is after all those of us that leveled them who took the time to obtain the necessary recipes and levels to use them. Now I am not saying we should charge them exorbantly, but we should be paid for the work we have done.

On most servers the top money making professions are some of the easiest and most neglected by new and old players in terms of keeping them skilled up. Mining, herbalism, alchemy and skinning are the easiest skills to level with alchemy being the hardest of this group. I cannot recall how many times I hear each day not only from my own guild members, but from other players as well that they have not leveled their professions and have no gold. Now I can understand this from a newer player, but from people that have a level 70 character is just unbelievable. Most of them believe that their professions are secondary addon pieces of the game that they can do without because the ultimate reward and goal is to get to level 70 and get geared, however, this is not completely true.

Much of the game of World of Warcraft really begins at the highest levels. Getting to these levels is a journey, but once there the real fun begins. So making gold to maximize this fun should be our highest priority. For example a new player who keeps their professions leveled can easily have enough money by level 60 to obtain their epic riding mount as soon as it becomes available to them. The same holds true for their level 70 flying mounts.

One of the things you must do to keep the gold flowing is to pick every flower that you come by while questing, mine every node and skin every beast you slay. Of course these will each depend on your professions. When I start a character on a new server I normally choose to make the new character my money making toon. This means that I take two professions that compliment or enchance each other. For example on Maiev my level 70 hunter was my first serious horde toon. I started there with no gold and did not know anyone. I used my knowledge of the game and choose to be a miner and enchanter. I know enchanting is not a great one to choose with mining to make money, however, I needed to be able to enchant my own gear if need be and it worked out quite nicely for me. My other character on this same server is a level 70 rogue that I made into and herbalist/alchemist. Between the two of these characters I have been able to supply new gear, mounts and much more quite easily and lend friends I have made on the server enough gold to buy mounts themselves if they were having troubles.

On any given day I make between 600 and 1000 gold through my professions and daily quests all without ever spending any of my real money for gold from the sellers online. One thing you may have caught is that I just said daily quests. Many players overlook these quests at 70. They might only do a couple a day to get some quick gold, but doing even half your daily quests will give you access to about 200 to 300 gold per day from the turn ins and drops that you will obtain.

At the beginning I mentioned addons. The two most important addons I have found are Auctioneer and Gatherer. Auctioneer is probably the single most important addon in the game in terms of making money. This simple addon is extremely easy to install and use. Typical installation of it takes all of 1 to 2 mins to download and install into your interface/addons folder. These 2 minutes of your game time will be worth thousands of gold per month if you use it.

So how does this one addon work and allow you to make so much gold in game? The answer to this is quite simple. When you install Auctioneer you will need to make sure you activate it like you would any other addon for the game. Once installed and activated simply go into the game and go to the nearest auction house. You will notice that your auction house screen has some more tabs and buttons available now. One of these buttons you will notice is called scan. Click this button and wait until the addon scans the auction house and is complete. How will you know it is done? Simple. The addon will display a serious of numbers in your chat box that has the information for that scan including auctions scanned and updated etc and will play a musical number once it is done for you to be aware of its completion.

Scanning the Auction house allows your addon to obtain the average sale price of each item that has been sold over the past several days. If an item has not been sold lately do not worry auctioneer can help you determine the best price to sell the item at. Make sure you update your auctioneer quite regularly so that you keep up with the most current prices. Since on Maiev this update takes only 3 minutes I normally update it each day, but on larger auction houses on very busy servers you may consider a schedule such as Friday, Monday and Wednesday so that you catch a good range of prices and to avoid having to spend 10 minutes updating everyday. Auctioneer provides much much more then just this, but that is for another article. For more info on it visit Curse.com or the official AuctioneerAddon website.

The other addon I mentioned is available from Curse’s website as well and is very, very simple. Once activated it will help gathering professions track the best and most common spawn points to find herbs and nodes for mining. In addition it does track treasures you find, but for my purpose just being able to fly or ride to the most likely spots to find mines or herbs is by far the most valuable time saver and money maker for me.

Making gold in World of Warcraft is quite simple and very enjoyable if you use the tools available to you and if you simply keep your professions up to date. Remember that there are many websites out there that can help you learn the best ways to maximize your WOW experience.

For those of you who do not know how to install or activate addons you can find more information on them at Curse.com.

I was researching how to better optimize my attacks while in arenas since mana efficiency even for a hunter is a necessity. A hunter without mana can be almost as useless as any other mana dependent class. Yes I know the argument from some will come that hunters have their pets or that even if the pet is dead they are still able to deal a decent amount of white hit damage. All this is true, but having no mana even as a hunter in the arenas will almost mean a loss for your team.

I noticed that many of the combos I used during PVE were not working as well in arenas and that I quickly was going through mana way to quickly. Then I came across a forums post at elitistjerks.com from last June on just this subject. Lets just say I was amazed at the difference that just some simple adjustments to the way I thought in terms of damage would make overall.

The original poster makes the argument that steady shot will create significantly more damage then any other combo. While his post shows many combos and some well thought out graphs I decided to put his theory to the test with my own 70 hunter on the Maiev server.

According to the poster if you start out your fight with your normal attacks such as a mana drain on casters and maintain these attacks throughout the battle and then simply use an auto shot/steady shot attack in between you will due a significant amount more damage. Well I have to say he was right in every aspect. I used several different combinations for our first five arenas with mixed results.

In our first two fights we won quite easily since our competition was not well coordinated nor geared. Our next three arenas went quite different. In two of these I ran out of mana long before the fight was over and we lost. In the final arena I almost ran out of mana, but thanks to good tactics on the part of my priest friend we won barely.

Over the course of the next five fights I used the method suggested by the poster and was totally shocked to find that not only did I have more then enough mana, but that I saw an increase in my damage totals on average of twenty-five percent. While we did not win every one of these arenas we did manage to win four of them and come out of the days trials with a respectable 7-3 record.

Now while it is true that the flow of a battle in the arena can shift and change constantly depending on the skill of the teams and the team makeup; it can also be said that with a little research and study of your characters strengths and weaknesses you can find a solution to fit any situation you might find in the arenas. Remember that even if you lose in the arenas it is not that bad since you have learned something new and hopefully can find a way not to make those same mistakes again.

Many people today are so focused on leveling their character for outlands that they skip most instances after Zul’ Farrak. Most people give the argument that these instances are unnecessary since the gear obtained from them is for the most part immediately replaced with the first few quests in outlands. I am as guilty as anyone else in doing this same thing with my own characters, however I have been giving much thought lately to these old world instances.

When Burning Crusade came out all old world instances and raids were all but abandoned and for good reason. The gear even if it is epic level gear is mostly useless in the outlands. What most of us see as a waste of time is in fact a missed opportunity for some good old fashioned fun. I can remember the feeling the first time I saw Molten Core and how awesome it was to be in a raid with forty other players with goal in mind “Survive and Get Geared.”

While yes these old world raids and instances are not worth the time spent for the gear alone if we look at them as a shear fun aspect of the game we would probably all be looking to do them. Imagine the new players to the game that came in after the expansion and who have not explored Molten Core, Onyxia or even experienced the fun and challenge of taking down a world dragon.

These instances and raids still have something to offer us in terms of fun if we would simply take the time to go back to our roots. With all the focus being on arenas and the new raids and instances I do not see this happening anytime soon.