Best Haircut of Azeroth Contest Winner!

Congratulations to this year’s best haircut of Azeroth….Cream! Cream’s stylish night elf chick clearly WoW’d..pun intended, the Zug Gaming voters and after a close race Cream came away with 25% of the total votes! For his entry Cream is receiving a free 60-day World of Warcraft game card in addition to his own copy of Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide.

Not only will he have a few extra IRL gold, but he’ll now have more in-game gold than he knows what to do with!

Additionally, congratulations to our 2 runners up. In 2nd place, we have Kostas aka Korasidis, with his pink haired Mohawk. And last, but certainly not least, we have Chir Sung with his unique looking undead stylings. For their accomplishments and excellent hair stylings both Kostas and Chir Sung will also be receiving a free copy of Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide, including free updates for life!

Thanks everyone who participated in this year’s Best Haircut of Azeroth Contest. While the weekend down time was certainly an unexpected hitch in the road, I don’t think it derailed this year’s contest too much. Once again, congratulations to our winners and to all the players who submitted their haircut screenshots…you’re all winners in my book!

Note to winners: I’ll be sending out emails tomorrow afternoon regarding your prizes.

Cream - Victor and Esteemed Zug Gaming Champion

Kostas - 2nd Place

Chir Sung - 3rd Place

Final Voting Results

WoW’s 4th Year Anniversary!

Today, November 23rd, 2008 is the official 4 year anniversary of World of Warcraft! There have been a lot of really great times in the last 4 years of WoW. From the early rocky days of Molten Core to the beautifully designed and executed updated Naxxramas and Northrend. World of Warcraft has come a long way in 4 years and I can only expect it to continue to improve in the years to come.

In celebration of the occassion Blizzard has added a new achievement into the game called, WoW’s 4th Anniversary, to complete this achievement you simply have to log your character in at any point during the day…today, 11/23/08. So make sure you log all your characters on today!

For completing the achievement you get a free baby blizzard bear.

With that said…Happy 4 years of WoW!

Wrath of the Lich King Wrap Up Post

The time has finally come, we are now just a few short hours away from the greatest expansion World of Warcraft has ever seen. I know I can’t hit all the changes in this wrap up, but I’ll do my best to hit all the major additions, changes, and other note worthy points regarding the WotLK.

WotLK Preparations

• What should I do get ready?
• Make the Most Gold in WotLK

General

• WotLK Mounts
• Flying Mounts in Northrend
• Profession Bonuses and Perks
• Dual Specs Feature
• New WotLK Enchants
• Updated Horde and Alliance Racials
• WotLK Titles
• Profession Daily Quests Token System
• WotLK Spellpower Change

Classes

• Death Knight abilities
• Death Knight FAQ

Patch Information

• Patch 3.0.3 Info
• Upcoming WotLK Patches

Achievements

• Achievement System Details
• PvP Achievements - Part 1
• PvP Achievements - Part 2

Videos

• WotLK Cinematic Intro
• Engineering Motorcycle Mount Video
• WotLK Exploration Video

PvE

• Heroic Dungeon Loot List

PvP

• WotLK Honor Gear Prices
• WotLK PvP Changes
• Wintergrasp Boss Drops
• Season 5 Honor Gear
• Season 5 Arena Armor

Guides

• Knights of the Ebon Blade Reputation Guide
• Jewelcrafting: Gem Perfection
• WotLK Enchanting Guide
• WotLK Enchanting Scrolls
• WotLK Alchemy Items
• Inscription Shoulder Enchants
• Inscription: Glyphs Compiled

note: more to come later

Zug Gaming Club - Gold Tips, Strategy, Hints, Info and More!

Hey guys, just wanted to announce that I’m finally starting the Zug Gaming Club back up again! I started the Zug Gaming Club several months ago, but unfortunately other obligations and projects ended up putting the club on the back burner…so my apologies for the hiatus.

With the WotLK expansion right around the corner I figured this would be the perfect time to start things back up again.

What’s in the Zug Gaming Club?

• Gold Farming Tips
• Important Breaking News
• Leveling Hints
• Club Members Only Events
• Special Guides and Strategies
• Much much more!

How Can I Join the Zug Gaming Club?

Joining the Zug Gaming Club is easy, simply sign up using the form below. Every time there is a new piece of information, tip, or hint you’ll be informed automatically via email.

Your Name:
Your E-Mail:

Arena Season 5 Start Date Announced

Season 4 Ends, Season 5 Start Date Announced

We wanted to remind everyone that Arena season 4 is coming to a close. During next Tuesday’s maintenance, all arena teams, as well as ratings, will be wiped and arena charter NPCs disabled. Thus, arena points will, unfortunately, not be rewarded for rated games played this week.

The next Arena season will begin on December 16th, and once that happens players at level 70 will be able to participate in rated matches against level 70 opponents and gain Arena points for item purchases but will not count towards the end of season rewards. At the same time, level 80 players will be able to compete in rated arena matches where they can gain arena points which can be used to purchase level 80 arena gear, as well as compete for end-of-season rewards. Additionally, players at level 70 will continue to be able to play skirmish Arena matches against other level 70 opponents even after Wrath of the Lich King launches. It’s also important to note that two new skirmish brackets (71-75, 76-80) will be available for players who wish to hone their Arena skills while leveling in Northrend.

Wrath of the Lich King: What can I do to get ready?

Well WOTLK is going to hit US stores in ten days and I can’t say more than 1-2 days later for places all across the globe. There’s been a bit of talk of preparation for the expansion, so I thought why not sum it all up here?

WotLK Professions

It’s a little late to be starting a new profession at this point, but if you currently have a profession around 250-300 I’d say finish it up for awesome perks for level 80 stuff. What perks might you ask, well you can find them here:

Profession Bonus Perks

Inscription:

This will become a top dog money maker for level 80 when arena season 5 hits. It’s very possible to powerlevel this profession quickly; however, if you were late of stocking up on herbs your wallet might be hurting.

WotLK Gold Farming

At this point I’d say stock up as much gold as possible. If you haven’t gotten your epic flight mount though I would make an investment there. Why a 5200g mount? Well Northrend is going to be huge from what I’ve heard on the beta, so why torture yourself on a 100% ground mount or 60% flight mount? For gold farming you’ll want to take a look at Derek’s guide, I have a review in the forums but the overall summary is I am one happy consumer. You can find it here(YES, it will be revamped for WOTLK so you too can make ridiculous amounts of cash at 80)

http://dominatewowgold.com/dwg/index.html

WotLK Bank, Bags, Etc.

SELL, SELL AND SELL!!! You’ll want fresh bags and a whole lot of bank space for the vast amounts of items you’ll be gathering on your way to 80.  You’ve got time for this particular preparation step, but don’t procrastinate to the point where your items aren’t worth crap.

WotLK PvP and PvE

At this point in arena you’re probably just messing around with 3.0 talents and probably grabbing a few pieces of gear from the arena vendors. This isn’t a bad idea as the gear will last you about 3-5 levels before replacement. Now as for all you raiders out there you’re going to want to grab as much T6/Sunwell gear as possible. The stat inflation won’t be as ridiculous as Pre-BC to BC so that gear will last you ’til about level 68.

WotLK Leveling

Not a huge thing to be worried over, but you also don’t want to hinder yourself of time just because you didn’t want to drop a measly 50g. Basically once wrath drops respec to the talent spec that will allow you optimal PVE killing and dungeon crawling. You’ll probably grab a 51-point talent, but it’s more of a personal preference call.

Make Illidan eat his heart out by you BEING PREPARED and ignoring him for 10 levels lol.

This will probably be my last written site post before level 80, as I mainly wrote on pvp so I’ll seeya fellas Season 5! :)

5 Steps to Having the Most Fun in WoW

First I would like to introduce myself.  My name is William Tyler aka Billtripod, my main’s name is Kohrin who is a 70 human warrior.  I’m married, have a newborn baby, work full time and go to college.  I play WoW casually, but still want to compete in PvP/Arena as well as do the occasional raid. As many of you already know all of this is close to impossible.  My goal here as a new member to the Zuggaming team is to help casual players accomplish hardcore-Esq goals and achievements. So lets begin with my top 5 ways to be an effective member of WoW society and the real society too!

Specialize

Every WoW player wants to kill Illidan, be a 2400 rating arena team and have 10000000 Gold.  Specialize in PvP or PvE, unless you enjoy just doing the entry level things on both sides.

Stay positive

Don’t ever get discouraged at a 0-100 arena win/loss ratio or being bottom of the DPS meter in a raid. It may take you a little time, but you have to eventually get better, and most importantly the people beating you most likely doesn’t sleep, eat, or see sunlight(no offense Zug lol).

Read forums

When in doubt of your own ability, before rerolling every class in the game out of frustation, read the forums.  95% of the time most casual players are misusing some core ability or missing them entirely.  Reading forum posts is almost as effective as playing especially when you read something you didn’t know.

Set goals

Players who aimlessly wonder through the game never get anywhere.  The guys with the purples, nether drake, and 10000 gold didn’t get it in a day (…ie. the guys like Zuggy!).  Is a crazy mount, gear or gold more important?  Find which is most important to you and set goals on how to  their.  Some goals are synonymous with others.  If a player wants a mount then they should read forums about making gold and then in the end they have 5k gold and a new mount.

Have fun

Many people I know including my best friends and myself try to turn WoW into a chore or grind to something. Ultimately if you have all the gear in the game and you hate the game then maybe you should look at whats fun and change your direction. Whether your winning or losing, if your having a good time who cares if you have Season 4 and pwning n00bs?

I hope this initial post gives someone something useful.  In post to comes I hope to cover very speciafically each point covered above and every point in between.  Please comment/critique as much as possible. I am new to this and would love any advice or feedback

Thanks

-Bill Tripod-

Achievement System FAQ

Notable Achievement Information

• Achievement Titles
• WotLK PvP Achievements - Part 1
• WotLK PvP Achievements - Part 2
• New Mount Achievement - awards albino drake
• Leroy Jenkins Achievement
• Top 7 Kick Ass Achievements
• Explorer Achievement Title
• Best Blizzcon Achievements (humor)
• Tuskarrmagedon Achievement (humor)

Achievement System FAQ

Q: What is the achievement system?
A: The achievement system is a new feature in World of Warcraft (introduced in the Echoes of Doom patch) that allows players to track accomplishments and statistics of characters in all aspects of the game.

Q: How does the achievement system work?
A: You can browse all of the available achievements when you open the achievement window (the default key to do so is ‘Y’). Aside from Feats of Strength (see below), all achievements are visible, whether you have completed them or not. When you select an individual achievement, you will receive additional information on how to complete each one and how close you are to completing it. When you complete an achievement, a message will pop up on your screen specifying which achievement you earned. Players in the immediate vicinity and in your guild’s chat will also receive a message indicating what you’ve accomplished.

Q: Can I track how close I am to completing an achievement?
A: Yes. When you select an achievement, you will see a check box with the word “Track” in the lower left corner of the achievement description area. Check this box to display your progress in the quest tracker area.

Q: What are achievement points used for?
A: Achievement points are used to indicate how far a character has progressed into the achievement system.

Q: What are Feats of Strength? Why can’t I see a list of them?
A: Feats of Strength are special accomplishments that are either very challenging or no longer possible to complete in World of Warcraft. Some of these include old-world player-vs.-player ranks, certain rare mounts, and special titles. As such, we do not expect players to try to earn them, and they do not provide players with any achievement points.

Q: Why are certain dungeons not showing up as completed achievements when I know I did them but others are?
A: World of Warcraft was not originally designed with the achievement system in mind. While we were able to use specific items in a player’s inventory or completed quests to track and award some dungeon achievements retroactively, this was not always possible. As a result, some dungeons must be completed again to get the achievement.

Q: I play a lot of characters, so are there any achievements that will look at my whole account?
A: Not at this time, but we hope to add account-wide achievements in the future.

Q: Can I see my achievements on the Armory?
A: Not at this time, but we have plans to add these to the Armory in the future. We will provide more details when they become available.

Q: Will more achievements be added in the future?
A: Yes. We plan to build on this new feature and add more achievements in the future.

Q: What is the statistics tab in the achievements interface?
A: The statistics tab (located at the bottom of the achievement window) contains a wide variety of data on a character to help show the journey he or she has gone through in the game so far.

Source: blizzard

Blizzcon Day 1 & 2 Recap

With Blizzcon finally over we are at last getting to sit down and take a solid look at all of the changes. All in all I’m really happy with how Blizzcon went this year, I think the developers did a great of explaining their reasoning behind many of the upcoming features and changes for WotLK. There’s no doubt in my mind the expansion is headed in the right direction.

Major Blizzcon Announcements

• Blzzcon Secret Project Announced - next gen MMO outside of WoW / SC / Diablo universe
• Future WoW Patch News - includes info on patch 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3
• Dual Spec Feature - allows you to switch between 2 talent specs you’ve setup at no charge, however you cannot change specs during the middle of an arena match.
• Return of BGs - Blizz wants to bring back battlegrounds competition, potentailly creating rated battlegrounds and / or rated guilds
• Strand of Ancients - Changed from 10v10 to 15v15

Blizzcon Panels

• Blizzcon Day 1 Recap Compiled - Includes classes, groups, user interface panels from day 1
• Blizzcon PvP Panel
• Blzzcon Raids and Dungeons Panel
• Blizzcon Developer’s Panel
• Blizzcon Class Panel Part 2 - part 1 is in the day 1 recap.

Blizzcon WoW Raids and Dungeons Panel

5 Man Dungeons

Halls of Lightning

• Just like all the dungeons built by the Titans the Halls of Lightning had to feel huge while restricting the gameplay space to make sure that players don’t have to run around too much.
• Players aren’t really able to fight titans because they’re obviously way too big and way too powerful to be fought, that’s why designers had to come up with new ideas of creatures to let people experience this part of the lore.
• The first boss roams between multiple platforms and you can decide where you will fight him, the 2nd boss is visible as soon as you enter the first room and is located on a platform above to make players want to go up here and figure out who this guy is.
• There are plenty of Titan themed arts like statues shaped as constellations, astral maps, etc …
• The 3rd boss is an air elemental with a custom model, developers want to use more of that to make bosses feel more “unique” and would like to stop using so many “trash” models for bosses.
• The last boss, Loken, is a messenger of the titan and his fight also feature a fairly long storyline.

Ahn’kahet

• Ahn’kahet is the 2nd part of the Azjol-nerub dungeon, as you go deeper into the ground more influence from the Old Gods can be seen. (Temples, etc …)
• This is also the first time you will encounter Faceless Ones in World of Warcraft.
• New technology has been added to make this underground dungeon feels like a very huge cavern, it actually mix up outdoor and indoor elements to achieve this.
• Ahn’kahet looks pretty big when you enter the instance, but you only get to travel through a very small part of it. (As most of the elements are here to make the cave feel bigger and nicer)
• There are plenty of new unique abilities used by the bosses here, and the instance uses a bunch of a new mechanics to make the fights funnier.
• The last boss is a Faceless One and rely heavily on the new phasing technology. Each player is phased into a world where his own teammates will attack him, once he managed to defeat them he will be switched back to the normal world to help his teammates.

Raid & Dungeons

Obsidian Sanctum

• The Obsidian Sanctum was made with scalability in mind. TBC entry raids (Magtheridon) were far too difficult at the release.
• Players here will fight Sartharion and 3 adds, they can choose to kills these adds before killing Sartharion or keep them alive instead to get more items.
• As the fight get more difficult, the players are rewarded with better rewards in case of success, the best reward being the Reins of the Black Drake for the 10 man version and the Reins of the Twilight Drake for the 25 man version)

In it’s current state on beta servers, the encounter goes as follow :

• 1 Add alive (10 Players) : Extra ilvl 200 Item
• 2 Adds alive (10 Players) : Extra ilvl 213 item
• 3 Adds alive (10 Players) : Reins of the Black Drake

Pretty much the same with 25 players, but with slightly better gear.

• 1 Add alive (25 Players) : Extra ilvl 213 item
• 2 Adds alive (25 Players) : Extra ilvl 226 item
• 3 Adds alive (25 Players) : Reins of the Twilight Drake

The Eye of Eternity

• Malygos is a huge lore figure and this dungeon had to feel special. As you enter it you will just see a floating platform and the script relies a lot on scripting to make it as interesting as possible.
• To enter this dungeon at least one player in your party needs the key to start the encounter, you will have to kill Sapphiron in Naxxramas to complete this questline.
• This dungeon also features the Red Dragonflight, as developpers didn’t want such a strong lore figure to be killable by players alone.

Additional Q & A

• A feature might be added to “kick” AFK players in raid without having to wait 30 minutes until they disconnect
• They’re still thinking about how 10/25-man legendaries are going to work and feel that new caster/healer legendary items are needed. They would also like to bring back atiesh-like legendaries with a long questline instead of random drops.
• Uldum is still on the table, but definitely no ETA for it.
• The amount of items dropping should be fairly balanced between casters and melee weapons.
• There won’t be many level 80 attunements, the only attunement right now is the one for Malygos and it only requires one person in the raid to kill Sapphiron in Naxxramas
• Hunters should be able to off-tank with a defense-speced pet but aren’t meant to main tank anything with it.
• Sunwell was way too hard, developers want content to be challenging but you shouldn’t have to do 500 try on bosses like M’uru to kill them.
• The goal in WotLK is to have a smoother progression between the different types of dungeons (Normal > Heroic > Raid). In TBC some heroic dungeons were way too hard and some of them way too easy.
• Devs would like to add more portals between wings of the same instance (a bit like Dire Maul) to let people decide if they want to keep going in the dungeons, or just stop here.
• The Ashbringer storyline will continue, and you’ve only got a few days left to complete Atiesh from the old Nax. (= Patch 3.0.2 this week)
• A lot of improvements are on the way for the LFG tool

WotLK Itemization

Death Knight Scourgeborne’s Battlegear (10) Scourgeborne’s Battlegear (25) Scourgeborne’s Plate (10) Scourgeborne’s Plate (25) Druid Dreamwalker’s Battlegear (10) Dreamwalker’s Battlegear (25) Dreamwalker’s Garb (10) Dreamwalker’s Garb (25) Dreamwalker’s Regalia (10) Dreamwalker’s Regalia (25) Hunter Cryptstalker’s Battlegear (10) Cryptstalker’s Battlegear (25) Mage Frostfire Garb (10) Frostfire Garb (25)

Paladin Redemption’s Battlegear (10) Redemption’s Battlegear (25) Redemption’s Plate (10) Redemption’s Plate (25) Redemption’s Regalia (10) Redemption’s Regalia (25) Priest Garb of Faith (10) Garb of Faith (25) Regalia of Faith (10) Regalia of Faith (25) Rogue Bonescythe’s Battlegear (10) Bonescythe’s Battlegear (25)

Shaman Earthshatter’s Battlegear (10) Earthshatter’s Battlegear (25) Earthshatter’s Garb (10) Earthshatter’s Garb (25) Earthshatter’s Regalia (10) Earthshatter’s Regalia (25) Warlock Plagueheart Garb (10) Plagueheart Garb (25) Warrior Dreadnaught’s Battlegear (10) Dreadnaught’s Battlegear (25) Dreadnaught’s Plate (10) Dreadnaught’s Plate (25)

Source: thanks to mmo-champion who compiled the gear lists above.

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