World of Warcraft turns eight on November 23. To celebrate players who log in between November 18th and December 1st will receive special Feat of Strength achievement. They'll also be gain a Celebration Package that will give them access to fireworks, a cosmetic tabard, and an eight percent bonus to experience and reputation points from kills while it's active.

Bilizzard also released a celebratory anniversary video that takes you through the years from the original release of World of Warcraft to the newly revealed shores of Mists of Pandaria.

Over the next few months, I will be creating and posting video guides for World of Warcraft heroic dungeons in the Mists of Pandaria expansion. This is the first video in the series for the Temple of the Jade Serpent. This dungeon located in The Jade Forest on Pandaria is one of the first MoP dungeons accessible to players at level 85. The Jade Serpent Temple has been taken over by the Sha of Doubt. To reclaim the temple on her behalf, players must defeat several of the inhabitants of the temple who have been become corrupted before finally defeating the Sha of Doubt.

Recently I have been spending quite a bit of time in World of Warcraft playing the Mists of Pandaria expansion. On the whole I am really enjoying the new content, even though leveling from 85-90 took a bit longer than I expected, it was a matter of a week casual game-play. I did the first LFR raid released and all of the heroic dungeons. They all well made, bug free and allot of fun.

My only issue so far are the dailies. Oh my god there are a ton of dailies. You may ask why this is a problem? If you don't like dailies simply do not do them. Well the issue is that in MoP you cannot buy any Valor level gear without having achieved at least Honored reputation 4 factions (Revered for most gear). In its self Honored is not that hard to get, so I was able to unlock Honored with 2 of the factions so far, which allows me to buy a Valor Ring and Necklace. However I cannot unlock dailies for a Shado-Pan faction unless I first reach Revered with the Golden Lotus. With about 100-150 reputation per daily quest and 12000 reputation needed (80-120 dailies). To unlock all of the valor gear I need to do around 400 daily quests (adjusting for various rep gains fro.

So I like many players have some build up Valor points and nothing to do with it. At this point running Scenarios & Dungeons have very diminishing returns. I basically need to roll up my sleeves and do my dailies.

See you in Pandaria

Here is a great video of 25 Death Knights doing Heroic Dragon Soul Raid in World of Warcraft. Mind you Dragon Soul got a significant nerf recently (in preparation for MoP), still there are no healers in the group and although DK tanks can self heal it is still a fairly significant accomplishment.

Here are some of the details behind the raid:

• 4 Tank Blood DKs
• 17 Dps Blood DKs
• 3 DC Heal Blood DKs (to assist tanks with Deathcoil Glyph)
• 1 DW Frost DK (for buff)

They also had to swap in a druid and priest on Spine to beat the dispell mechanic of that boss (just alts of 2 DKs in the raid), the rest were all blood DKs

Well, it's finally official the MMO we all have been waiting for, the answer to all our problems, the WoW killer and the new MMO king ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2, has launched. However can this game really live up to everyone’s expectations?

Let me start off by saying the game is certainly good. However I am not sure if GW2 will be the WoW killer we have all been waiting for.

What I like!

GW2 has certainly innovated the MMO genre. Allot of the things that make you mad about leveling in other MMOs are fixed in GW2. To really understand this you really have to play Guild Wars 2 but here are some of my favorite improvements.

Automatic quests are one of my favorite things in GW2. You no longer have to clear spiders to get to a quest giver just to find out that he wants you to kill 10 spiders. It’s all automatic, say you walk up to a farm that is spider infested, your quest will automatically appear saying kill spiders, and disappear when you leave the area so your quest list is never cluttered. Also when you finish the quest you get your experience immediately and the reward is mailed to you. You can also check your mail anywhere :)

Dynamic events are also great. Once a while you will get a notice saying there is dynamic event happening. It’s just a quest that happens at random times that requires a large group of people to complete. However it is fun as many people in that area will run to complete the event. So you will find yourself in a group of 20 people fighting centaurs or protecting a caravan etc. It’s actually allot of fun

No need to party. You do not need to be in a party to play with other people. If you help someone down an enemy you both get the reward. You can’t steal other people’s kills. You simply just find a group of people that seem to be on your quest and help each other down enemies. This really promotes group play and makes it even more fun to play.

Automatic down leveling. This is also a great idea. I have friends that play GW2 but I may behind them in questing. No problem if they join me in a level 10 area they will automatically down level to 10 making the fights challenging. However they will still get rewards equal to their level. You can also party with people on different servers which is an amazing feature that I think is long overdue.

What is also good?

I want go into too much detail on these areas but the graphics & combat are very good. The combat feels very much action packed although it’s still hot bar based. Graphics are excellent both from a style perspective and visual appeal. Also your gear color can be changed anytime.

World vs. World vs. World

This is also a very unique and potentially fun part of GW2. Players from 3 servers fighting to capture keeps and supplies using siege engines in a persistent battleground (resets every few weeks). I was really looking forward to this and I have to say I am both pleased and annoyed. I am pleased because when you actually get into a large fight over a keep it could be allot of fun. However I am annoyed because when you die you have to teleport to the nearest waypoint. And it’s far. You have to walk and walk and walk back and if you get unlucky you can die in 1 minute of fighting and teleport back and walk and walk and walk again. Also my server sucks so we are really getting our buts kicked in WvWvW.

I will reserve my judgment over WvWvW because I think I am still too low level to really enjoy it. Also as I learn the map and how to fight better I think it will be allot more fun than it is.

World of Warcaft Killer?

There is still allot of content that I have not experienced in this game that will take some time to discover. Is this game a WoW killer for me? I do not think so. GW2 is different it lacks things like Raids, mount collecting, custom add-ons like the recount DPS meter, tank & healer roles (which many people like) & item level which are ever so present in WoW. I think WoW can (and will) adopt many of the innovations that GW2 has introduced and be just as successful as it is now. At the end of the day I think GW2 will hit other free to play titles the most. GW2 is probably the best free-to-play title available today. There are many WoW players that will switch but I am just not sure if GW2 will ever hit the 10 million player mark.

I do want to add that Blizzard certainly paid attention to GW2 releasing WoW’s patch 5.0.4 on the same day as the GW2 release. I am not sure how well that worked out though as during WoW’s server outage I was playing Guild Wars 2 :)

Yesterday Blizzard released its pre expansion patch 5.0.4. The patch went out 3 hours late but went out fairly smoothly after that. This new patch did cause a bit of in game chaos as it featured talent revamp, a spellbook overhaul, AoE looting, cross-realm zones, UI changes, currency conversions, and account-wide achievements, mounts, and pets.

Players also found that most of their add-ons such as Deadly Boss Mods and Spellflash were not functioning even if updated to their latest versions. Healers had to heal by clicking on health bars rather than using an add-on. Noxxic was down for part of the night as everyone tried to look up how to spend their talent points and new rotations. Without spellflash and Noxxic players had to figure out their own rotations, you like we usually have to do in all other MMOs :) It is safe to say there were many wipes.

There were some good news though, players that had rare mounts on other characters can now use those mounts on all of their tunes. Also with the elimination of Valor and Conquest points players can now purchase Valor and Conquest gear for the much easier to get Justice and Honor points. So everyone's item level went up overnight.

All things considered this patch going out a month earlier is probably a good idea considering it spreads to chaos and might make Mists of Pandaria launch a bit smother.

Blizzard releases an official cinematic trailer for World of Warcraft's fourth expansion set, Mists of Pandaria. Although I personaly hated the Pandarians at first (Pandas in WoW common) I have to admit that this video takes me a long way towards making peace with the new WoW race.

Blizzard Entertainment has just posted an "important security update" to its official site.

"This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.

At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.

Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China. For players on North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to Battle.net accounts.

Although no passwords have been stolen, the encrypted password (hash) was, this does make it theoreticaly possible for someone to decrypt your password, so my advice is change your passwords as soon as possible. Also the answer to the secret questions has been compromised, this in my opinion would make it possible for someone to reset your password.

Source: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html

Mega Bloks World of Warcraft toy line is now available in stores across Canada, the United States, The United Kingdom, and online in Germany. Are you getting one? I think the Sindragosa and the Lich King looks like something I might like to get.

Here is a video review of the Deathwing's Stormwind Assault by The Brick Show

Source: http://warcraft.megabloks.com/

GameBreaker.tv Legendary Episode 80 discuss some of the PvP changes coming to World of Warcraft with Mists of Pandaria