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World of Warcraft has, as you have probably heard, been offline in China for a while now. Even though The9 originally said they’d transfer over their servers to NetEase, they later decided to fight it out, leaving WoW offline for a matter of weeks. And it isn’t quite up yet, but they’re getting there — this (very roughly) translated article says that Battle.net servers are now up and running, so Chinese players can now at least sign in to Battle.net, if not into the game itself. We already went through the same thing here in the US and the EU, so Azeroth should be back online in China any day now.

Meanwhile, the poor folks at The9 have not been doing so well — they were on top of the world last year, but when World of Warcraft up and flew the griffon out of there, they lost the majority of their business. A new AP article has them revising their expected earnings down by an “estimated 55 to 75 percent.” Ouch.

Let that be a lesson, NetEase. Keep your instances running and your downtime low, because if Blizzard pulls the plug on a game you’re running, they’ll be taking a ton of money with them.

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Gold farmers! They’re everywhere, right? We get spammed by them, we run into them farming Dire Maul, we put them on ignore. Lazy people with too much disposable income buy gold from them in a show of crass consumerism. Blizzard has done their best to stamp out gold-farming services, but litigation is difficult due to the fact that most of the major gold-farming companies are based in China or other parts of Asia. They’ve instead opted to try to control and stop gold farmers from being able to complete transactions via other methods.

This time, though, it looks like Blizzard may have an unlikely ally in, of all things, the Chinese government. They announced today that the trading of virtual goods for real money is now illegal in China. This ruling reaches farther than just gold farming, though. It also bans the sale of prepaid time cards for MMOs or other online games, as well as numerous technicalities we’re sure to hear about in the weeks to come.

To give you an idea of how much an economic impact this will have on China, gold farming alone generates nearly one billion dollars a year worldwide, with China’s specific numbers growing at a reported rate of 20% per year. It’s estimated that 80 to 85 percent of gold farmers reside in China, so this ruling is massive and, to be frank, pretty troubling.

From a gamer’s perspective, yes, it’ll be nice to worry about this kind of service a little less, but from a human perspective this places hundreds of thousands of Chinese people in one of two kinds of serious trouble: the first is financial hardship from the “honest” gold-farming companies that will close down after this ban, and the second is legal issues from the companies who don’t close down because they can’t afford not to do what they’ve been doing.

It’s not my intention to defend gold farming as an industry, because I used to have to deal with its more nefarious effects every day — compromised accounts stripped of gold and gear, keyloggers, disruptive spam, all of that. But life isn’t easy for many Chinese people working jobs like this. Many gold farming centers are much cleaner and safer, in relative terms, than other places in China where one on the bottom rung of the financial ladder might seek work, so while I appreciate the change as only a white first-world male can, I worry about what will happen to the underprivileged working-class Chinese people behind the spam ads and dead gnomes when this law starts getting enforced.

NOTE: Racial slurs/attacks/stereotypes in the comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned. You can state a negative opinion, but do not make it an attack. Thanks.

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Well, that answers that question. According to what MMO-Champion has found in the PTR item database, Tier 9 gear from patch 3.2’s Crusader’s Coliseum raid comes in three different versions for each set (T7 and T8 come in two, from 10- and 25-man). There’s one version at ilvl 232, one at 245, and one at 258. This leads to the following loot distribution, I’d guess:

• 10-man normal (232) < 10-man hard (245) = 25-man normal (245) < 25-man hard (258)

Others (such as 10n < 25n < 10h = 25h) are logically possible, but to me, that’s the most likely distribution that leads to three different ilvls. It’s also the way Ulduar is done with normal and hard modes, apart from some differences in weapon ilvl.

Crusader’s Coliseum on heroic is a bit different than Ulduar hard modes, though. It seems that when you do a heroic CC raid, you start out with a certain number of attempts (wipes), and the more attempts you have remaining upon defeating the final boss, the better loot you get. So will ilvl 258 gear be contingent upon beating CC-heroic in (say) fewer than half your attempts? I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.

Of course, the really important question is: what the heck will we call the 3 different sets? T9.0, T9.33, T9.66?

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Bornakk has just announced that they’re currently rolling out a fix to our Midsummer woes that will reset all of the associated Midsummer quests. If you’ve been following along so far this holiday, it turned out that if you did all of your fire honoring/desecrating last year, you wouldn’t be able to do it again this year. That meant you weren’t able to get enough Burning Blossoms to purchase what you needed for the various achievements.

We expected a fix from the beginning, and we’re all glad to see it happen. It didn’t take them long to do it, and that’s a huge plus. The more time we have to get the Flame Keeper/Warden achievements done, the better.

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Welcome to Scattered Shots. I am Eddie “Brigwyn” Carrington from The Hunting Lodge and I’ll be your tour guide each Thursday as we explore what makes our Hunters tick and how we can make them better.

Well, maybe not your mother. But you know us Hunters, we really love our macros. Unlike some other games out there, World of Warcraft gives players a pretty simple method to help customize their playing environment. We all know about the cool add-ons like Recount and RatingBuster. Now add to that the ability to arrange the look wow goldand feel of our User Interface and Blizzard really has done something special.

Instead of trying to tackle those, I thought we could talk about the one that gives many of us players some difficulty: macros. And you know what? They really don’t have to be that complicated.

Before we get started, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least explain little bit about macros. At least I need to define what macros are what they are not. Macros are a way to combine several commands (attacks, emotes, or other actions) and combine them into a single button press or click.

As with most things in life, there are some rules we have to make sure to follow. For example, your character can only have 54 separate macros (36 shared across your characters, and 18 assigned to a specific toon). Also, each macro can only contain 250 characters. (Now, if you use Twitter, you already know that’s a little less than 2 tweets.) Don’t let this limitation fool you though: macros are extremely versatile and offer a ton of flexibility.

If you are interested in more details about how to script or create macros, I’d say head over to WoW Wiki. Their macro resource goes into a lot more detail on the workings of macros and commands than I could attempt to do here. However, what I can do is give you a list of different macros and show you how they can be used for PvE as well as PvP. Let’s take some macros and see what they do and how they can apply to each style of play.

(Note: you might need to alter some of these macros depending on spell availability.)

Save Fluffy (PvE or PvP)

Keeping one’s pet alive is one of the biggest challenges to a Hunter. And for a Beast Mastery Hunter, losing your pet can mean a loss of up to 40% of your DPS. This macro will yell out asking for a healer in your raid to heal your pet. Then it will cast Mend Pet and start using bandages to offer a bit of help.

/Yell FLUFFY NEEDS HEALS!!
/cast Mend Pet
/use [target=Pet] Dense Frostweave Bandages

Feed Fluffy (PvE or PvP)

Pet feeding used to be a chore. But with the automatic pet feeder it’s not bad at all.

/cast Feed Pet /use Clefthoof Ribs

Pet management simplified (PvE or PvP)

Now if you want, you can actually combine the two macros above into a single pet management one. What do I like about this? It’s how you can replace several different buttons from your action bars with just this one macro. The only gotcha is that this macro uses the control, shift and alt keys as modifiers. So when you click it, remember to hold the appropriate key at the same time.

/cast [modifier:alt] Revive Pet
/cast [modifier:shift] Mend Pet
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Call Pet
/cast Feed Pet
/use Clefthoof Ribs

Time for bed (PvE or PvP)

This is a great macro to use when you have party members being mind controlled during Yogg-Sarron. In PvP, well let’s just say it can really frustrate some Warriors and other Hunters.

/cast [target=mouseover] Tranquilizing Shot

Save me Seymour! (PvE or PvP)

When you’re in battle and need your pet to pull your hide out of the fire, this one can do it.

/cast Master’s Call
/cast Roar of Sacrifice
/cast Intervene

Incoming! (PvE or PvP)

Depending on which method you prefer, you can either use the one that requires you to use focus or if you prefer I have one that allows you to just mouseover the intended target.

/focus /cast [target=focus] Misdirection

or

/cast [target=mouseover] Misdirection

Give me mana (PvE or PvP)

This is an aspect switching macro. Each time you press the button you can switch between DragonHawk and Aspect of the Viper. It’s a great single button macro so you can easily switch between aspects.

/castsequence Aspect of the Dragonhawk, Aspect of the Viper

Go get ‘em (PvE or PvP)

This one assumes you are and your pet is attacking the same target. It will send in your pet, apply Hunter’s Mark and then fire of a sting. If you are questing or in a raid, you’re probably wanting to apply Serpent’s Sting. And if you’re in Arena you will probably want to try and sap your opponents’ mana. Here’s a PvE and and a PvP version of the same macro.

PvE Version:

/petattack [target=target] /cast Serpents Sting

PvP Verson:

/petattack [target=target] /cast Viper Sting

Shh… Be Quiet (PvE or PvP)

Silencing shot is still one of my favorite spells. There is nothing like seeing mage getting ready to send a giant fireball your way only to be left speechless. The enjoyment is even bigger when it’s another player instead of an NPC mob.

/cast [target=mouseover] Silencing Shot

Full Steam Ahead (PvE or PvP)

This is the old standard Beast Mastery I-Win button. By pressing a single button you will set off Bestial Wrath, Kill Command, Rabid Fire, and both of your trinkets.

/cast Bestial Wrath /cast Kill Command /use 13 /use 14 /cast Rapid Fire

Hunter Melee (PvP)

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right, Hunters are not suppose to melee. But I don’t know about you, but every time I duel or decide to go into a battleground, sure enough someone will sneak up on me and force me to fight my way out. Then I remember I have Disengage and can click it. So to save room on my action bar I created this Hunter Melee Macro.

/cast wing clip /cast raptor strike /cast mongoose bite

Nosebleed section (PvE or PvP)

Sometimes I just need to see more of the game than allowed by the default camera zoom. If you didn’t realize it, you can actually make the camera zoom out further letting you see more of the terrain. This can be especially helpful in those raids where you need to see what’s going on while still watching out for bubbly red stuff. An even better use of this is in PvP when sometimes it could literally mean the difference between a corpse run or extra honor.

/script SetCVar (”cameraDistancemax” ,50)

That’s about all I can think of for now. For more macros and how to use them, I suggest you check out WoW Wiki’s Hunter macros. If your looking for macros to help your PvP game, check out the Arena Junkies Hunter macro site. There are just too many different ways to use macros to capture here. I’ve seen special shot macros and trap macros. I’ve even seen macros that can switch out your gear and ammo.

What about you guys? Do you have any favorite macros? Or have you been searching for a macro and just can’t find the right one? Let me know and let’s see if we can really get a comprehensive list of Hunter macros together.

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Yay for new heirlooms! Earlier this afternoon, Blizz bestowed upon us the information that in patch 3.2, there would be some heirlooms available for purchase by those who had gained their Crusader titles. There was some hoping in the comments section for an XP boosting belt and/or chest, and your prayers have been answered.

Yes, Zarhym has revealed that you will be able to get chest piece heirlooms in patch 3.2, and that they will give a 10% XP boost that does stack with the boost from the shoulders. So that means, recruit a friend trickery aside, the well-appointed alt can get 10% from shoulders, 10% from chest, and another 100% from rest (at times), and they all stack.

This brings the list of heirloom-able slots to: main/off/two-handed weapons, shields, ranged weapon, trinkets, shoulders, and chest. And there might be more to come in patch 3.2 that we haven’t heard about yet. My alts are excited already.

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The Wordy Warrior covers a well-traveled subject in an interesting way in her latest post. We’ve already talked in-depth about how to get into a good raiding guild (and we’ve even covered some amazing guild applications), but straight from the trenches of guild leadership, Ariedan sends an open letter to anyone applying to her guild with, some might say, the wrong attitude.

Here’s the thing: especially if you’re applying to a progression guild, odds are that they don’t need you. They’re progressing just fine, and bringing you in just opens the door for more drama. It’s a risk, and it’s your job to convince them to take that risk, hopefully for the benefit of both. So if you show up to an application and don’t take it seriously, and flip out when they question your background, and expect them to take you on without any proof you’d be valuable to them, don’t be surprised when they laugh you right out of their forums.

We’re probably preaching to the choir here — if you’re reading this site, you probably already have at least one clue, and are either in a guild you like that is not a raiding guild, or are in a progression guild that you got into because you were able to justify that risk. But if you’re still having trouble figuring out how to get where you want to be, take WW’s advice to heart: it’s on you to justify your entry to the guild, it’s not on them to put up with you.

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Just when the world seemed dark and without hope, just when it seemed like there could be no victory, just when it seemed everything that’s right and good about the world would be extinguished like a match between Arthas’s forefinger and thumb . . . a hero arises. And that hero is Shepiwot.

How to paladin XXXII is the continuation of Shepiwot’s How to paladin series, obviously. It’s hard to define Shepiwot’s genre exactly. He’s created something entirely his own. It’s not PvP video, obviously, and it’s certainly not Belf Rap. But, ultimately, it is unique and without peer. But as I sit here, watching it over and over, like decyphering the Dead Sea Scrolls, I can tell you that it certainly is “How to paladin.”

I will close with this simple comment. Holy crikey, I can’t believe there are thirty one other installments in this series. Talk about a legacy! I look forward to “How to paladin XXXIII.”

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Should warriors and druids no longer generate rage from damage taken? Ghostcrawler mentions this as a possibility being considered to change the way warriors and druids tank, one that would eliminate difficulties when rage-using tanks take too little damage/avoid too many attacks and have trouble tanking content that they outgear or are using avoidance heavy gear to tank.

• Having warriors only or mostly generate rage from damage done is an intriguing idea that has come up a few times. It would help the problem where better gear leads to rage starvation (at least in lower instances) and where warriors have trouble OT’ing because they aren’t getting hit. It might also get warriors to care slightly more about dps stats instead of focusing mostly on survival stats. This would all apply to druids too. This isn’t a change we have in the pipe, but it is something we discuss from time to time.

Of course, this would require a real shift in how warrior/druid tanking mechanics worked. It would also have massive effects in PvP: it would essentially break the pattern of design that makes focus firing a warrior in PvP a slightly more risky proposition, since if you don’t kill them they’ll turn your own damage back on you. (It could also mean that switching to bear as a survival strategy in PvP for druids would become hobbling.) It’s a very interesting idea: as a warrior who is currently DPS, I know that rage starvation can be a real issue when you’re reliant on damage dealt, any misses or dodged/parried attacks can sink your rotation, so hit and expertise would become even more aggressively important stats for tanks.

There’s a lot of issues to consider, but it would make all warriors and all rage based tanks more balanced with each other. No more praying for rage after a dodge streak, no more taking off your pants to run a heroic if you’re in raid gear, and more attention paid to parity between DPS and tanking rage use. I’m not sure I want to see so big a change in the game, and I’m certainly hoping they do it right if they do it at all.

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We had a great time as always last Saturday on our podcast — Turpster and I welcomed Kevin Dika, the winner of the Child’s Play Children’s Week auction, who gave a very generous donation to Penny Arcade’s charity and won a guest spot with us on the show. We talked with Kevin about his WoW experience — he plays a Ret Pally, but hey, nobody’s perfect, right? — and got some insight from him about running a guild in the game and what a tough job it can be, how to deal with kids and other folks playing along with you, and how to come up with a worthwhile balance between playing the game and living in real life. We answered your emails (including a few more “Turpster is…” emails), and then we talked about the most popular posts from the last week of WoW.com: the new Druid art form coming to the game, what’s new in 3.1.3, and where Blizzard has gone wrong recently with 5-mans, and where they might go next.

It was an excellent show, and we’re happy to have Kevin on to thank him for his support (and he did a pretty great job on the podcast, too). We’ll be back on as usual next Saturday at 3:30pm Eastern over on the Ustream page, and we might even do some more video streaming next week — we did a little bit during the aftershow this week, and it worked out better than I thought. Stay tuned.

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