This post is copied from the forums, here. Go there for player questions, follow-up, etc. Post is by Frejya. The only editing here is for readability with this WP theme.

Beta has begun!!!

—For those of you wondering, you will need approximately 30GB available to download and play!—

Thought I’d post this, as there have been a plethora of threads asking about the “when” and “how” of the beta. I should note that, with few alterations, this has been copied from the Wrath Beta thread put forth by Bornakk last year.

It looks as if Battle.net will, indeed, be the method of choice for opting-in. See the end of this post for how to use it!
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Q:Where will Blizzard post information about the beta?

A: Blizzard will always post such information on the official forums and the web site. Consider any other site and/or e-mail fraudulent. When in doubt, go to the official website!
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Q: What is an Opt-In?

A: Rather than randomly select from the player base, Blizz uses the opt-in, where players sign up to play. This ensures only players who express an interest in the beta will be selected for participation.
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Q: Who is eligible for the Cataclysm Beta opt-in?

A: Any player who has an active World of Warcraft subscription, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is eligible. The account must be active when the beta starts in order to be eligible to receive an invitation.
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Q: How do I know if my account is considered active?

A: You can check the status of your World of Warcraft account at any time by logging in to your Account Management page. Once logged in you will find this information listed under the “Account Information” section.

Your account will be in one of these states:

- Active: This account is active and can be used for playing.
- Canceled: This account will remain available for play until the current subscription expires.
- Frozen: This account is inactive and can not be used for playing.
—–

Q: How do I know if I’ve made it into the beta once I’ve opted-in?

A: Blizzard will send an e-mail that will direct you to the beta download site on the Battle.net site. To be safe, do not follow links in e-mails – go directly to the site manually!
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Q: Will invites be sent on a first-come, first-served basis, or will invites be sent randomly?

A: Beta invitees will be selected randomly from the entire pool of players who have chosen to opt in. Signing up early doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be invited sooner than someone who signs up after you.
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Q: Is this the only opportunity I’ll have to get in the Cataclysm beta?

A: No. Keep an eye on the official World of Warcraft site and official fansites for more chances. Wowwiki, Wowhead, and Worldofwar participated for Wrath.
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Q: How long will opt-in signups be available?

A: Players will be able to opt in until the beta closes.
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Q: If there are multiple World of Warcraft accounts in my household, can I opt in with each of them?

A: You may, though this doesn’t guarantee every account in the household will be invited.
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Q: Can I opt in more than once on an single account?

A: You can only opt in once per account. If you try to opt in a second time, you’ll simply get a message saying that the account has already opted in.
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Q: Are there any character-level requirements to participate?

A: No.
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Q: Are there any specific system requirements I must meet in order to participate?

A: Short answer: No. However, you will be required to download a program that will send your specs to them (similar to what is contained in your dxdiag). This is to ensure that an adequate sampling of all system types is represented in the testing.

Battle.net Opt-In Procedure :

• 1) go to battle.net
• 2) After logging into the Battle.net account, click the Beta Profile Settings (green) located under Manage My Games.
• 3) Create your Beta Profile by downloading the Beta Opt-in Application.
• 4) Save the System Check file for your chosen operating system. Launch the file to begin loading. Before any system specs will be updated into your Beta Profile Settings, you must agree to the Blizzard Beta Test “Opt-in” Agreement.
• 5) After selecting Agree, the Battle.net System Check will begin. Click the yellow Send button to associate your system specs with the Battle.net account.
• 6) Once the system check is completed and sent, you will be taken to the account management page, where you will be able to view your system specs. You can also decide which beta tests you are interested in. All universes are check-marked by default. To save any changes that are made, click the yellow Update Preferences button.

What happens once invites get sent:

• 1) You’ll receive an invite in your regular email that is associated with your battle.net account (make sure it’s current!)
• 2) Physically go to battle.net – do not follow any links! This minimizes the chances of you following malicious links in fake emails!; Log in to your battle.net account
• 3) Follow the instructions included in your beta invite email!

There’s been a whole lotta discussion about RealID and it looks like Bliz was actually listening. While it’s true that there are a ton of people who don’t care much about their online privacy there are many who do care. So it looks like Bliz is going with that crowd. Good for them.

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums. ?

Read the rest is on the WoW forums

Credit where credit is due – I found the reference on Tobalds: Blizzard backpaddles (sic)

If you use macros for your characters you might want to check out World of Macros. The author is collecting macros for all the classes and arranging them by class and by build type. So if you only want the macros for your Shadow Priest just click the right category and there you are.

Worth a look: Wow Macros

I guess Zygor and Dugi have a bit of a situation going. I only found out about it today, and no, I haven’t been paying attention. I’ll just make a couple of points and throw up a link and that’ll be about it. For now, anyway.

As an aside: I’ve been using Zygor’s guide for awhile and I like it. It’s updated contantly, especially when new patches are launched. IMO it’s pretty good stuff and you can see more remarks on my Zygor Review page.

I haven’t looked at Dugi’s leveling guide at all, so I can’t remark as to how it stands up to Zygors.

There was some back and forth between the two guide groups and Zygor has a response on his public forum here.

Happy New Year
to all of You and Yours

Regardless of race or faction affiliation or the quality of your gear!

The new tier 10 armor sets. This might be enough to make me pass on any gear rolls in the new 3.3 raids (assuming I could actually get into them in the first place.)

The t10 rogue set, noooooo…..

• Paladins now wear dresses.
• The Tauren and the Humans have merged (hunter armor) or maybe those are gloves?
• Warriors, DKs, Priests, and ‘Locks are Ok, at least by comparison to the others.

So here they are, in all their, ahem, glory.

I think Bliz needs to look into Aion’s armor remodeling system.

I’m spending a lot of time in Aion right now, but once the novelty wears off I’ll spend more time in WoW. Each game does some things better than the other and I find both to be fun. Heck, I still like City of Heroes. Nope, I’m not quitting WoW, I’ll be playing that game for a while still.

But it sure is cool that WoW might finally have some competition.

Aion’s winning acolades for the best MMO of the year. Well, since all the others were, in one way or another, severely broken that’s not necessarily saying much. Or maybe what it says is that it’s damn hard to create a viable, fun MMO that appeals to more than a select few.

Aion does a lot of things right. It’s graphically gorgeous and runs well on my meager machine. (I really need to get a better video card. )

So… my thoughts, in no particular order…

The lag? Aion’s laggy at times, but no more than Dalaran. My machine runs it well enough to be playable, but WoW is definitely smoother. More horsepower would be nice. Some people with nicer machines report 80 FPS.

The character generation system just pwns all others. Even the one in City of Heroes, though that one does a better job on costumes. Choose from a bunch of hair styles and basic faces (yawn) and then tweak the face to your heart’s content. The same with body design. You can make a small headed, thick thighed WoW Human or a delicate Elf Prinecess. No tails, though… so Draenei are out, but you can make some strange looking types. Pretty, ugly, tiny, huge, tall, short, fat, thin, whatever, it’s all there.

While there’s only the one set of clothes at the start you can see how your character will look in starter gear, undies, and high level gear.

You get to pick from either of two races with no real racial differences, Elyos and Asmodian. Light and dark side, or Pigeons and Furbacks. Four starting classes branch of into eight at level 10.

• Warrior becomes Templar (tank) or Gladiator (off tank and/or melee DPS)
• Mage becomes Sorcerer (ranged DPS bolt lobber) or Spiritmaster (much like a Hunter or Warlock.)
• Priest becomes Cleric (main healer) or Chanter (light heals, buffs, some DPS)
• Scout becomes Assassin (melee DPS) or Ranger (Ranged DPS, Hunter w/o pet)

More Customizing

WoW has more character customization with the talent trees, but Aion has some. Characters gain stigmas starting at level 20 and these add various abilities. Stigmas have to be installed at a Stigma Master, but they can also be removed and reused.

Eavery piece or armor and weaponry also has sockets for manastones. These stones work very much like gems in WoW and add a bit to various stats, such as crit rating, hit points, mana pool, etc.

Backstory

The backstory is more or less this – Once upon a time the world was nice and all races were one. The gods above created a protector race, the Balaur, to make sure things stayed that way. But the Balaur got smart, realized the other races were tasty and best used as snacks or slaves, and so decided to conquer everything.

Once thing led to another (major war) and there was a major cataclysm that literally split the world into two halves. One side is continually sunlight and that’s the Elyos side. The other is continually dark and that Asmodians have that area. The Balaur inhabit the Abyss, a void between the two areas.

After the Cataclysm both sides lost touch with each other, and with the Balaur, and developed their owns ways. Fairly recently each has discovered the other, but things didn’t go well and there is now perpetual war. Furback and Pigeons forever at each other’s throats, when they’re not taking fighting the Balaur.

Rifts exist on both Ely and Asmo sides which give limited access to the other side. This results, naturally, in a certain amount of gankage. A few of one side pop through the rift, kill a few opponent (or try to,) word gets out, and they’re hunted down.

The Abyss

The Anyss is an open PvP area, but there plenty of mobs to grind, quests to do, resources to gather and so on. It’s a good place to level, as well. A little like Stranglethorn Vale in WoW. You don’t have to spend much time there, but you might want to.

There are a series of fortresses and artifacts that each side can control, to the benefit of that side. There’s also a nifty series of training quests (and a training instance) which clearly explains how that works. I’d love to see that in WoW for the BGs and some of the raids.

All servers are PvP servers, though there’s no real PvP game until 25. After that the game is set up for group PvP and big fortress battles. Most of the PvP happens in the Abyss which is inaccessible until level 25.

Instances

At this time I’ve only been in the one instance, the Training Grounds, which is a training instance for a fortress battle. Go in, clear mobs around the fortress, grab an artifact, kill the force field generator, knock down the gate door (with siege engines,) and kill the boss. Sometimes the boss even drops a piece of decent loot.

Crafting and Gathering

Aion has six crafts: Alchemy (potions, scrolls, manastones, mage weapons,) Armorsmithing (chain and plate armor,) Tailoring (cloth and leather armor,) Weaponssmithing (take a guess,) Cooking (yum!) and Handicrafting (accessories and bows.)

Crafting isn’t done just anywhere. You actually have to go to the crafting area and make the items on the forge, loom, whatever. You can grab work orders from the trainer to work up your skill. At 99, 199, 299, and 399 you pay him a great chunk of money (Kinah) to advance to the next level.

Work orders give you several items to create. When done you hand them in to the trainer and receive some item, generally a crafting mat, but it might be a recipe. Also, you gain XP for each item that you craft, if it isn’t too low level for you.

At least in the mid 20s (where I am) the stuff you craft is every bit as nice as anything you’ll find off a mob or on the broker (Auction House.)

There are two gathering skills which allow characters to gather anything gatherable, generally herbs, ores, and Aether. Like WoW you need to work your skill up to gather stuff.

Prices, Broker, Kinah

There’s only one coin, the Kinah, and it’s both pretty easy to gain and pretty easy to spend. Vendor junk sells for enough to keep you in decent goodies, nice gear (found) sells for quite a bit, and nice crafted gear sell for a lot.

Not only can you buy gear, but you can buy consumables, accessories, clothes, and more. Youi’ll also spend an arm and a leg to get your crafting skill raised.

There is a broker, which everyone calls the “auction house,” but since there is no bidding it isn’t an auction house. Something is put up for sale at one price and you buy it or pass. Youre also limited to ten items posted at a time.

A neat feature is the private store. Going AFK for a few? Set up a store with the items you want to sell at the prices you choose. Set up the store anywhere. Even in a PvP zone in the middle of a war, not that that’s recommended…

Issues?

Very few. There’s some griping about too few quests and too much grinding, especially at later levels. If you like to grind, then you’re ok. Still, there are a lot of quests so it’s not nearly 100% grind. Plus, mobs drop enough loot to take away some of the pain.

Solo PvP is, well, about like it is in WoW. Mismatched. But then, the game is designed around group PvP, which actually seems to work well.

You do need halfway decent hardware to run the game, but if it runs WoW well then it should run Aion just fine. With a hot machine Aion will be gorgeous.

Lag. Well, that really is more of a routing issue than your individual machine. It’s much better than in beta, but it still happens and rubberbanding pops up at times. Jumping off hills can be entertaining as you bounce back up the hill a couple of times.

Summary

There are a lot of other cool bits, too. All in all it’s a solid game, very stable (as stable as any other MMO) and surprisingly bug free.

I’ll be blogging about it at my little Aion blog and this site will be going back to WoW (and I’ll be posting more than every other month.)

I’ve posted an article the the GotWarcraft blog on the Top Three Rogue PvP Tips.

1 -  Know how to re-stealth

If you can’t re-stealth in combat, you are drastically reducing your survivability. The main techniques for acheiving this are to

1. blind and wait to leave combat
2. gouge/kidney shot your oppenent and run out
3. get your oppenent crippled and sprint away
4. vanish

Here’s the rest: Top 3 Rogue PvP Tips

Say what?

A friend and I are putting together a new blog, Orc and Gnome, which we hope will have an interesting feel to it. Over there we’ve written up a couple of posts on the patch (see below.) I’m the Orc, he’s the Gnome.

The 3.2 patch is live (or will be in a couple of hours.)

Lots of little changes. While there’s a lot of stuff there it doesn’t look like you’re have to rebuild your talents, unless you’re a Death Knight. DKs received a small nerf (much needed and yes, I play one) and they’re had enough talents moved and tweaked that a respec is necessary.

• The Orc on the 3.2 patch
• And the Gnome on the 3.2 patch, specifically some of the mage changes.

Massively has an interesting post:

There are always going to be times when, due to real life commitments, you can’t play your favourite MMO, whether it’s a month of exams or an important week at work…

The rest: The Daily Grind: How do you cope without your favourite MMO?

So the question is this: You’re not only cut off from WoW for a week (or month!) but you’re also cut off from the internet. No email, no twitter, no facebook, no illegal (or legal) torrent downloads, etc.

How would you cope?