The Azeroth’s Fortune race to 100% is extremely close now, with the Alliance and Horde running neck-and-neck. Last night both factions unlocked their 60% rewards, and it’s more pieces of music from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Alliance – The Lion’s Roar

The two pieces in this download pack are Accursed Moonlight by WoWpedia.org/Russell_Brower” rel=”nofollow”>Russell Brower, and Honor Calls by Glenn Stafford.

From the highest boughs to the deepest mountains, a call to arms shall be ushered forth. The voices of many shall reply as one, with glaive and hammer and lance and sword.

Horde – The Warrior’s Howl

The two pieces in this download pack are New Regime by WoWpedia.org/David_Arkenstone” rel=”nofollow”>David Arkenstone, and Protect the Bottom Line by WoWpedia.org/Derek_Duke” rel=”nofollow”>Derek Duke.

From enchanted towers to windswept bluffs, a call to arms shall be ushered forth. The voices of many shall reply as one, with axe and fang and spear and arrow.

Be sure to head over to theAzeroth’s Fortune websiteto get involved and put your favorite faction into the lead!

The Azeroth’s Fortune promotion is moving along nicely now, with the Horde leading the pack at 45% and the Alliance at 41%. At some point last night or early this morning, both factions unlocked their 40% rewards — samples of two musical pieces being added with World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. The 50% reward looks to be a combined effort, or perhaps a single reward claimed by whichever faction reaches that percentage first. Either way, expect it to be some kind of video based on the Azeroth’s Fortune website.

Alliance – A Call to Arms

Under banners of azure and gold, disparate kingdoms shall join as one. Their horns shall sound in unison, and their call to arms shall carry across the world.

Horde – The Drums of War

On arid lands of red dust and stone, beleaguered nations shall join as one. Their drums shall beat in unison, and their battle cries shall carry across the world.

UTV True Games revealed Faxion Onlinein May of this year, and there’s already information coming out from the studio about character abilities in the game. The unique Heaven-versus-Hell theme affords UTV True Games the ability to implement very cool abilities — both in their use and visually.

Today we’ve received details on a handful of these abilities, as well as screenshots showing off their visual effects. The game will be shipping with 50 abilities per class, so consider the below just a very small sampling.

While unlocking abilities will be granted through traditional leveling methods, each ability has additional ranks to improve it. These ranks are instead attained through training-over-time, and you won’t even need to be logged in to advance their ranks. In addition, you’ll be able to speed this up via micro-transactions, if you so choose.

One ability, Shockwave, looks like a sphere of “Force” energy what will knock back nearby enemies and deal damage to them. Another, Tribunal, allows players to flourish their weapon and strike all enemies within range of their attack. The last ability information is on Legion, an ability exclusive to the Hell faction that releases a demonic contagion on a target enemy and any other enemies standing close by.

Stay tuned for more news on Faxion Online as its beta test nears.

Filed under: WoW.joystiq.com/category/news-items/” rel=”tag”>News items, WoW.joystiq.com/category/pvp/” rel=”tag”>PvP, WoW.joystiq.com/category/cataclysm/” rel=”tag”>Cataclysm

WoWcom-tol-barad-000-1289939981.jpg” alt=”" />

• Tol Barad is not only an open PvP zone; it’s also a daily quest hub.
• Unlike Wintergrasp, Tol Barad won’t have a Tenacity mechanic. Instead, players will be matched up at a 1:1 ratio, with a maximum of 80 players allowed in the zone.
• Much like Eye of the Storm, players will have to claim three keeps around the zone. Unlike Eye, if a player dies while defending a tower, that will directly affect the slider bar, moving it in favor of the opposing faction. So stay alive!
• Winning Tol Barad opens a raid, just like Wintergrasp. The Tol Barad raid takes place in Baradin Hold.
• And of course there are reputation rewards, including two brand new mounts with a ghostly look.

WoW.joystiq.com”>WoW Insider” style=”float:left;padding:0 5px 5px 0″ />WoW.joystiq.com/2010/11/16/blizzard-releases-new-cataclysm-preview-tol-barad/”>Blizzard releases new Cataclysm preview: Tol Barad originally appeared on WoW.joystiq.com”>WoW Insider on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

WoW.joystiq.com/2010/11/16/blizzard-releases-new-cataclysm-preview-tol-barad/” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent link to this entry”>Permalink | WoW.joystiq.com/forward/19720999/” title=”Send this entry to a friend via email”>Email this | WoW.joystiq.com/2010/11/16/blizzard-releases-new-cataclysm-preview-tol-barad/#comments” title=”View reader comments on this entry”>Comments

Filed under: WoW.joystiq.com/category/news-items/” rel=”tag”>News items, WoW.joystiq.com/category/pvp/” rel=”tag”>PvP, WoW.joystiq.com/category/cataclysm/” rel=”tag”>Cataclysm

WoWcom-tol-barad-000-1289939981.jpg” alt=”" />

• Tol Barad is not only an open PvP zone; it’s also a daily quest hub.
• Unlike Wintergrasp, Tol Barad won’t have a Tenacity mechanic. Instead, players will be matched up at a 1:1 ratio, with a maximum of 80 players allowed in the zone.
• Much like Eye of the Storm, players will have to claim three keeps around the zone. Unlike Eye, if a player dies while defending a tower, that will directly affect the slider bar, moving it in favor of the opposing faction. So stay alive!
• Winning Tol Barad opens a raid, just like Wintergrasp. The Tol Barad raid takes place in Baradin Hold.
• And of course there are reputation rewards, including two brand new mounts with a ghostly look.

WoW.joystiq.com”>WoW Insider” style=”float:left;padding:0 5px 5px 0″ />WoW.joystiq.com/2010/11/16/blizzard-releases-new-cataclysm-preview-tol-barad/”>Blizzard releases new Cataclysm preview: Tol Barad originally appeared on WoW.joystiq.com”>WoW Insider on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

WoW.joystiq.com/2010/11/16/blizzard-releases-new-cataclysm-preview-tol-barad/” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent link to this entry”>Permalink | WoW.joystiq.com/forward/19720999/” title=”Send this entry to a friend via email”>Email this | WoW.joystiq.com/2010/11/16/blizzard-releases-new-cataclysm-preview-tol-barad/#comments” title=”View reader comments on this entry”>Comments

House of Thule, EverQuest’s next expansion, launches next week on October 12th. With that in mind, the EverQuest Team is throwing a party of sorts this weekend. Starting today and running through October 10th, all closed accounts still in good standing have been reactivated for the weekend, enabling access to everything that EverQuest has to offer.

In addition to that, you’ll also be earning double experience, rare monster spawn rates have been increased, and you’ll gain faction at a faster pace for the duration of the event. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for special GM events taking place, as the guide team over at SOE has a few things up their sleeves for the weekend.

If you’re interested in House of Thule, the special reduced price pre-order promotion for the Collector’s Edition runs out soon.

Today BioWare published a fairly lengthy blog post about the advanced class system in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Check it out below!

We recently announced the Advanced Classes system in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I’d like to take the time to fill you in on what the team has been up to, provide some details about the game mechanics surrounding Advanced Classes, and answer some of the questions that the community has voiced on our forums (yes, we do read those… daily).

Why Advanced Classes?

As you know, a core feature of Star Wars: The Old Republic is that we are shipping the game with eight classes – each with an epic story, full voiceover, quests and cinematics. This creates a very unique game experience for each of them, something never done in an MMO before.

Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that we had the flexibility to support several play-styles within each of these eight classes. So we built Advanced Classes into the game from the ground up to provide us with the ability to create and support different gameplay and roles inside each class.

Designing Advanced Classes

We currently have four dedicated class designers, each one of them responsible for one class from each faction. For each class, the team began by looking at what players would expect from a class as a fan of the Star Wars movies and/or as a fan of the MMORPG genre. We then worked on how we would integrate those expectations into the game via Advanced Classes.

In some cases, this led to integrating ‘traditional’ MMO roles into our existing class structures: The play style generally associated with the ‘healer’ role in MMOs is very popular with many players and we wanted to make sure that we offered that role in our game for our audience. In fact, we are offering two classes that can develop into fully capable healers for each faction via one of their Advanced Classes.

In other cases, we identified roles for our game that are unique to the Star Wars experience: While the idea of a ‘ranged tank’ is hard to realize in most MMO environments due to the prevalence of melee combat, the ‘Vanguard’ Advanced Class for the Trooper is perfectly viable in the Star Wars setting where blaster fire and ranged combat dominate the majority of engagements.

As we have already revealed, the biggest impact of choosing an Advanced Class is the access to two unique skill sets offering active and passive special abilities that significantly alter a character’s combat capabilities. Additionally, a third set of skills is shared among all members of the same class.

But you knew that already, so let’s get talk about how this is actually implemented in our game with an example:

Example: The Smuggler

Han Solo, Lando, Talon Karrde There are plenty of different Smuggler personalities to be found in the Star Wars universe to choose from and this is reflected in the versatility of their available Advanced Classes:

The Scoundrel

The Scoundrel is not afraid of getting his hands dirty, as the ‘Scrapper‘ skill-set has an off-hand Scatter Gun, a number of powerful (but not necessarily fair) melee moves and access to a Stealth Field Generator with various possible upgrades for a dramatic entrance or exit.

The ‘Sawbones‘ skill-set on the other hand offers ways to dramatically improve the Smuggler’s healing and support-related abilities, including access to the powerful Emergency Medpack.

And, if all else fails, the Scoundrel seems to have the uncanny ability to Shoot First, a very useful skill to have for sure.

The Gunslinger

Gunslingers are trained in a broad array of blaster-oriented abilities against both single and multiple targets and excel at dealing large amounts of damage from a safe distance. Their access to Illegal Weapon Mods may well give them the edge over an opponent insisting on a fair fight.

Their ‘Sharpshooter‘ skill-set includes many abilities geared at improving their personal damage, improving the performance of their groups, and gaining additional benefits from cover.

Whether lobbing Shrapnel Bombs on nearby enemies or dealing increased damage for enemies Shot In The Back, the ‘Dirty Fighting‘ skill-set is all about getting an edge over people who prefer a straight fight and helps to ensure that the Gunslinger delivers sustained damage to more than just one opponent.

The Shared Skill Set

Shared by both Advanced Classes, the ‘Luck‘ skill-set focuses on improving many of the Smuggler’s base class abilities such as increasing energy regeneration in Cover or delivering some Very Critical Hits when using Dirty Kick.

As you can see from the small set of skills mentioned above, players will be able to customize their personal Smuggler experience dramatically by distributing skill points across the three available skill-sets, defining their character’s role as Smuggler as they see fit: Within the Scoundrel Advanced Class, a player preferring the traditional MMO healer role may spend the majority of their skill points training in the Sawbones skill-set with additional improvements to their core abilities from the Luck skill tree, or they could decide that a ‘Stealth Healer’ role with points distributed between the Scrapper and Sawbones trees might be the role they want to play in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Beyond Skill Sets

Access to exclusive skill sets is only one facet of an Advanced Class: Access to specialized equipment such as special Lightsaber types, heavy weapons, gadgets and armor is unlocked via Advanced Class selections, creating a unique visual signature for your character on the battlefield. Players will instantly know whether they are facing a Jedi Guardian or Sentinel by appearance alone – even before their opponents showcase their powerful special abilities.

Choosing Your Advanced Class

The team wanted players to be comfortable with the core game-play of their class before introducing them to more complex game mechanics, so you will not have immediate access to Advanced Classes at character creation. Instead, the choice will be given upon locating the Advanced Class trainer on your faction’s capital world. This is a mandatory choice; not picking an Advanced Class is not an option.

And finally.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game in development and in active testing. Any feature, ability or even class name mentioned above (or anywhere else on the website) is subject to review and testing, and may change between now and the game’s launch. The BioWare team believes in making fully-polished, quality games. We are listening to your feedback, and will continue to make improvements.

Thank you, and May the Force be with you!

Georg Zoeller
Principal Lead Systems Designer

Today BioWare published a fairly lengthy blog post about the advanced class system in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Check it out below!

We recently announced the Advanced Classes system in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I’d like to take the time to fill you in on what the team has been up to, provide some details about the game mechanics surrounding Advanced Classes, and answer some of the questions that the community has voiced on our forums (yes, we do read those… daily).

Why Advanced Classes?

As you know, a core feature of Star Wars: The Old Republic is that we are shipping the game with eight classes – each with an epic story, full voiceover, quests and cinematics. This creates a very unique game experience for each of them, something never done in an MMO before.

Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that we had the flexibility to support several play-styles within each of these eight classes. So we built Advanced Classes into the game from the ground up to provide us with the ability to create and support different gameplay and roles inside each class.

Designing Advanced Classes

We currently have four dedicated class designers, each one of them responsible for one class from each faction. For each class, the team began by looking at what players would expect from a class as a fan of the Star Wars movies and/or as a fan of the MMORPG genre. We then worked on how we would integrate those expectations into the game via Advanced Classes.

In some cases, this led to integrating ‘traditional’ MMO roles into our existing class structures: The play style generally associated with the ‘healer’ role in MMOs is very popular with many players and we wanted to make sure that we offered that role in our game for our audience. In fact, we are offering two classes that can develop into fully capable healers for each faction via one of their Advanced Classes.

In other cases, we identified roles for our game that are unique to the Star Wars experience: While the idea of a ‘ranged tank’ is hard to realize in most MMO environments due to the prevalence of melee combat, the ‘Vanguard’ Advanced Class for the Trooper is perfectly viable in the Star Wars setting where blaster fire and ranged combat dominate the majority of engagements.

As we have already revealed, the biggest impact of choosing an Advanced Class is the access to two unique skill sets offering active and passive special abilities that significantly alter a character’s combat capabilities. Additionally, a third set of skills is shared among all members of the same class.

But you knew that already, so let’s get talk about how this is actually implemented in our game with an example:

Example: The Smuggler

Han Solo, Lando, Talon Karrde There are plenty of different Smuggler personalities to be found in the Star Wars universe to choose from and this is reflected in the versatility of their available Advanced Classes:

The Scoundrel

The Scoundrel is not afraid of getting his hands dirty, as the ‘Scrapper‘ skill-set has an off-hand Scatter Gun, a number of powerful (but not necessarily fair) melee moves and access to a Stealth Field Generator with various possible upgrades for a dramatic entrance or exit.

The ‘Sawbones‘ skill-set on the other hand offers ways to dramatically improve the Smuggler’s healing and support-related abilities, including access to the powerful Emergency Medpack.

And, if all else fails, the Scoundrel seems to have the uncanny ability to Shoot First, a very useful skill to have for sure.

The Gunslinger

Gunslingers are trained in a broad array of blaster-oriented abilities against both single and multiple targets and excel at dealing large amounts of damage from a safe distance. Their access to Illegal Weapon Mods may well give them the edge over an opponent insisting on a fair fight.

Their ‘Sharpshooter‘ skill-set includes many abilities geared at improving their personal damage, improving the performance of their groups, and gaining additional benefits from cover.

Whether lobbing Shrapnel Bombs on nearby enemies or dealing increased damage for enemies Shot In The Back, the ‘Dirty Fighting‘ skill-set is all about getting an edge over people who prefer a straight fight and helps to ensure that the Gunslinger delivers sustained damage to more than just one opponent.

The Shared Skill Set

Shared by both Advanced Classes, the ‘Luck‘ skill-set focuses on improving many of the Smuggler’s base class abilities such as increasing energy regeneration in Cover or delivering some Very Critical Hits when using Dirty Kick.

As you can see from the small set of skills mentioned above, players will be able to customize their personal Smuggler experience dramatically by distributing skill points across the three available skill-sets, defining their character’s role as Smuggler as they see fit: Within the Scoundrel Advanced Class, a player preferring the traditional MMO healer role may spend the majority of their skill points training in the Sawbones skill-set with additional improvements to their core abilities from the Luck skill tree, or they could decide that a ‘Stealth Healer’ role with points distributed between the Scrapper and Sawbones trees might be the role they want to play in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Beyond Skill Sets

Access to exclusive skill sets is only one facet of an Advanced Class: Access to specialized equipment such as special Lightsaber types, heavy weapons, gadgets and armor is unlocked via Advanced Class selections, creating a unique visual signature for your character on the battlefield. Players will instantly know whether they are facing a Jedi Guardian or Sentinel by appearance alone – even before their opponents showcase their powerful special abilities.

Choosing Your Advanced Class

The team wanted players to be comfortable with the core game-play of their class before introducing them to more complex game mechanics, so you will not have immediate access to Advanced Classes at character creation. Instead, the choice will be given upon locating the Advanced Class trainer on your faction’s capital world. This is a mandatory choice; not picking an Advanced Class is not an option.

And finally.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game in development and in active testing. Any feature, ability or even class name mentioned above (or anywhere else on the website) is subject to review and testing, and may change between now and the game’s launch. The BioWare team believes in making fully-polished, quality games. We are listening to your feedback, and will continue to make improvements.

Thank you, and May the Force be with you!

Georg Zoeller
Principal Lead Systems Designer

WoW.joystiq.com/media/2010/09/qa3header-1285125434.jpg” />

Every week, WoW.joystiq.com/category/gold-capped/”>Gold Capped (from Basil “Euripides” Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to WoW.com”>email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail!

WoW.curse.com/downloads/WoW-addons/details/quick-auctions-poster.aspx”>Quick Auctions Poster is here, and it’s going to change your life. It was written by one of the auctioneers who inhabit the Just My Two Copper forums, and here’s the description of what it does, straight from the download page:

This addon is a plugin for WoW.curse.com/downloads/WoW-addons/details/quick-auctions.aspx”>Quick Auctions that adds a checkbox to the auction house posting frame with which you can toggle continuous scanning and posting of Quick Auctions. It saves you the effort of hitting the post button whenever a scan has finished. Sadly, because this Quick Auctions button doesn’t have a name and its function is private, this action can’t be macroed, but this addon manages to obtain the correct button and simulates a click on it.

In essence, you can fill your bags up with stock, and instead of using QA3 to post a single batch, it will keep refreshing your scan for you while you wander off to do something else. It will keep automatically undercutting everyone until you run out of stock.

WoW.joystiq.com/2010/09/22/gold-capped-quick-auctions-poster-does-the-undercutting-for-you/” rel=”bookmark”>Continue reading Gold Capped: Quick Auctions Poster does the undercutting for you

Filed under: WoW.joystiq.com/category/economy/” rel=”tag”>Economy, WoW.joystiq.com/category/addons/” rel=”tag”>Add-Ons, WoW.joystiq.com/category/gold-capped/” rel=”tag”>Gold Capped

WoW.joystiq.com/2010/09/22/gold-capped-quick-auctions-poster-does-the-undercutting-for-you/”>Gold Capped: Quick Auctions Poster does the undercutting for you originally appeared on WoW.joystiq.com”>WoW Insider on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Interested in seeing what the Horde mount is? It is the Kron’Kar Annihilator (a scorpion), and you can see a video of it after the jump!

WoW.joystiq.com/2010/09/19/cataclysm-beta-horde-and-alliance-guild-mounts/” rel=”bookmark”>Continue reading Cataclysm beta: Horde and Alliance guild mounts

Filed under: WoW.joystiq.com/category/cataclysm/” rel=”tag”>Cataclysm

WoW.joystiq.com/2010/09/19/cataclysm-beta-horde-and-alliance-guild-mounts/”>Cataclysm beta: Horde and Alliance guild mounts originally appeared on WoW.joystiq.com”>WoW Insider on Sun, 19 Sep 2010 01:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

WoW.joystiq.com/2010/09/19/cataclysm-beta-horde-and-alliance-guild-mounts/” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent link to this entry”>Permalink | WoW.joystiq.com/forward/19639441/” title=”Send this entry to a friend via email”>Email this | WoW.joystiq.com/2010/09/19/cataclysm-beta-horde-and-alliance-guild-mounts/#comments” title=”View reader comments on this entry”>Comments