I read every line and I found some interesting stuff in there that you might have missed. I’m not going to just paste them. You can find them here or here. Instead, I’m only going to extract the neat stuff and discuss a bit about it.

Let’s see what we have.

General

Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World’s End Tavern!

Everyone’s favorite NPC came back with some new and cool items, like the 22-slot bag “Gigantique” Bag, 1 pair of goggles and 3 rings! Some say that the enourmous prices on these are to reduce inflation in the WoW economy.

One thing is for certain: really nice items to pimp up your bank char or to enrich your RP activity.

Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.

HELLOKITTY! Say woot? Finnaly! It was rather stupid to run all over the place until level 40 and I have to admit it really slowed my leveling time. And buged the hell out of me also, because Druids got Travel Form, Shamans got Ghost Wolf and Hunters got Aspect of the Cheetah way before 40. BUT NOW, it’s all over! Still, it costs 35 gold but that shouldn’t be a big problem (I had over 100 gold on my Priest at level 30 from Mining). Also, for Paladins and Warlocks it’s still (almost) free so in your face!

Warning: long post ahead (aka Wall of Text) so if you have time, you can read more after the jump

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Yeah, it’s all over the place so I guess I’ll post it also, just because I’ve waited so long for this:

We’re currently planning to end the third Arena season and begin Arena Season 4 on June 24, 2008. This exciting Arena season will introduce the Brutal Gladiator set, and will also allow players to purchase Arena Season 2 items using the honor system. Please note that we will be resetting all Arena team and personal ratings. Players will still retain their Arena points and teams with this reset. The team and personal rating will simply be reset to the default 1500, allowing all teams to once again compete for top honors with a fresh start.

Also, with the end of the third season, players on the top teams from each battlegroup will receive their end-of-season rewards. These include Arena-specific titles that they can display proudly until the end of the new season, and, for the best of the best, an Armored Nether Drake. Please also be aware that with the end of the current season, all previous end-of-season titles will be removed.

Source.

Get on with your farming now.

My work schedule can be sometimes a bit complicated so that screws up my raiding times. For that reason, I leveled a Draenei Shadow Priest to have fun in PvP.

And I love it. Nowadays, 80% of my playtime is on him. I only log on Tepisor when I can raid.

I find PvP rather enjoyable provided you find the right groups to do it with. Sure, honor farming is still boring (but not that hard) mainly because of people not having a clue how to play different BGs (everyone hates the guys fighting in the middle, right?).

I mainly enjoy duels and world PvP. I love it when I perfectly time a silence or a fear and that gets me the win. I hate it when they are resisted or I don’t focus enough to cast them right. I also despise rogues.

My gear is not great. I float around 150 Resilience which is really low. At the moment I’m saving honor for when s4 starts. Hopefully I’ll be able to buy at least 2 Guardian items.

I have also started Arena in 2vs2 bracket with a Rogue partner. Which brings me to the reason I started this post anyway.

I started the team 2 weeks ago. Went 2-8 and we stopped at around 1400 rating. Next week I got me another partner (mainly because the first one has his focus on PvE at the moment - both are friends I transfered from Karazhan with). We went 16-24 and stopped at 1366 rating.

I have no problem with that. I know I still suck and I need to learn a good deal more. So, following my constant thirst for knowledge, I was browsing the arenajunkies forums and came across this thread. I couldn’t help but smile in a very evil way. Why? I don’t really know. I’ve heard so much drama about win traders and such so this measure seems a good one even to it hit some innocent players. Apparently they punished even the people who joined a team of win traders, even after they left. So if you were ever in a team with someone doing that, even tho you had no idea what they were doing and/or you never did it yourself, you probably suffered as well.

Arena is fun and I like playing it. But I can’t help but think that the system is kind of flawed. Why?

At least 5 teams we faced had a booster in them

I’m rather ok with this and apparently it’s not against the policy. It’s like boosting your friend in a instance to get better gear. Xaldavar, Blizzard poster said:

The method of boosting a team by asking great players to help within your team is fine. In a sporting sense, it’s like paying for the services of a world class sporting persona to play with a local village football club.

I don’t care if you payed that person to boost you. It isn’t against any rules. But it still feels bitter loosing to those teams.

At least 10 teams we faced we’re S3/Vengeful

Now this I don’t get. Last week we somehow managed to get near 1500 then started getting teams that clearly out geared us. Why? I think that they started a new team just to get it high and then sell it. I’m rather undecided on my position here. For instance, we all need gold. I’m dead bored of questing, probably so are they. What’s the easiest way to make money and having “fun”? Sell arena teams. See where I’m getting? I don’t want to judge here because it’s not up to me to do it, but again, it’s frustrating loosing just because of facing better geared teams in low brackets.

I’m no PvP expert and still got lots to learn even before being decent. But how do you PvP?

Yep, it’s that time again. Time to rant and bitch because I like it oh, I like it so much.

Since my early days on the Karazhan server, playing AV was not so fun because we, Allies, always lost. Not because we were outnumbered, not because we were outgeared, just because we were outplayed. And why were we outplayed? Because people seem not to agree on the same tactic. And we all know what that brings to the /bg chat, right? Right now I’m sorry that I didn’t print screen some of the epic conversations during AV matches. It seems to me some think that if you type a lot and not move a muscle to actually be useful, you gain more instead of just shutting the hell up, letting others to concentrate on the play and not dragging them into your pathetic and pitiful attempts to be someone over the Internet just because life treats you unfairly.

Moving to Daggerspine somehow improved this, meaning the same thing happens only on some matches instead of all the matches. It’s almost a 50-50 chance to run into pizza-boys (if you play on Daggerspine, you know what I mean). People here seem a bit more smart in their play and more willing to play as a team. But in the end it all comes down to luck and time you play AV. I tend to play in the morning until 14:00 game time, when school is over and AV gets a bit… crowded. Then I resume my honor farming at around 22:00 but we only start to really win around 23:00 when bed time is up for the ones that crowded AV.

But all troubles aside, AV is still the best honor resource and after 2.4 it’s actually one of the fastest battlegrounds if played wise. What do I mean by wise? Just read these easy-to-understand tips and you’ll see what I mean.

Tips for playing Alterac Valley as Alliance

• Don’t fight in the middle - although being fun, it’s the most stupid thing to do. Looking at the honor you gain by doing this, just stickying to normal tactics is more rewarding. Not to mention that by doing this, AV gets too long and boring;
• Try not to run/get feared out when killing enemy generals - nothing is more annoying then a reset at 10%, is there? Also, if you are the one tanking, do it in the back of the room. It’s safer;
• Skip Galv if he is heavily defended (more than 5) - every time you wipe at Galv, God kills a kitten;
• Don’t cap IB GY while rushing towards the Relief Hut - this is really important and you need to think about it for a second: you just killed Drek, horde killed Balinda and are going for towers, capping Stoneheart GY on the way. Only GY you have right now are the Aid Station and Stormpike, along with Snowfall being Contested. They only have the Relief Hut and Frostwolf, along with Stoneheart being Contested. If you take Iceblood GY, they will be left to respawn at FW and thus bringing a lot of them to defense. And you don’t want that. If instead you just ignore it and only take IB and TP towers (very important to also defend them) and rushing towards FW GY to cap it, horde that respawn at IB will just rush forward. Later in the game when they have a more advanced GY, IB can be capped, but not sooner;
• Stay and defend Frostwolf GY with a reasonable amount of people - that means 5 but no more than 10. Cry for help if you get crowded. Rest of the attacking people should rush the Relief Hut;
• Don’t fight if you get bottlenecked - just gather around, mount and run pass them. If you die, try again until you succeed or find an alternate route. Fighting will just mean less time spent in offense;
• If the game is close, taking both mines puts a bit of pressure on your enemies;

An unconventional tactic I saw work many times was to heavy defend (also called to turtle). This requires you to:

• Defend Balinda;
• Defend Icewing and Stoneheart Bunkers;
• Form a defense line between the three of the above points;

This type of game would bring a nice amount of honor (maybe even more than a rush game) and is based on making the opposing faction run out of resources. It’s important to move back and recap bunkers in Dun Baltar if any get pass you or they stealth. Also having a group stealth to the Relief Hut and try to ninja the towers puts lots of pressure. Hell, might even be lucky and destroy them if defense is really weak.

These being said and my anger having went away after this post, I leave you with Alterac Valley - Newbie Guide and Alterac Valley - Standard Battle Strategy over at wowwiki.

I salute you.