If your doing Heroics fairly often, as im sure you are - head to the Old Kingdom, Ahn'Kahet or whatnot - last boss drops http://eu.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=37619 which is what my priest is currently using. Need a decent group considering the insanity on the final boss, but a good wand to go for.
 

In an addendum to the post above, he also drops some nice leggings you would probably find are an upgrade, after stalking you.
 

Tilt your camera above your character and look at the flames then. I haven't seen the staff yet, but I anticipate the flames continue to point upwards relative to your viewpoint. It would be the same thing as happens with the Prophecy and Devout shoulders, except that those would always point down relative to your camera. I used to put my camera above my character, spin it around a bit and exclaim to myself, "Oh no! You're severing yourself! You're severing yourself!" (This even happens with the trees in Mario64, actually. Bitmap sprites in 3D worlds are great fun!)
 

Congrats on the awesome healer staff, Tobold!

I just had a Titansteel Guardian crafted the other day for when I start running heroics in a week or two. Was ridiculously cheap for me at level 77 since I'm 450 mining. I just paid 100G for 2 Frozen Orbs on the AH and the rest was farmed over a couple days.

You're much better off with the staff - the patch notes for 3.0.8 on the PTR say the Guardian's spell power will be significantly reduced. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes down to 408 like several other main hands of the same ilevel. Hopefully they will make up for it by adding some other stats, but I wouldn't count on it. This mace, despite being epic, has all the looks of being this expansion's "Essence Focuser" if annyone remembers that weapon from TBC. Still, it's my first level 80 purple so it will have sentimental value, just like my Primal Mooncloth set which I have yet to delete :)

Packetloss
77 Disc Priest
Gorefiend - US - PVP
 

> One day Blizzard is going to add player housing to World of Warcraft

One would think, huh? Frankly, the lack of player housing has always been something that really pointed out the total lack of interest Blizzard has in truly re-investing in their game. We recently learned from a Vivendi stock report that over the lifetime of WoW, it has only cost a total of ~$200 million. That includes absolutely every cost - new code, hardware, utilities, support staff, etc. It basically boils down to about 47 cents per player per month on the cost to run and add to the game.

So why no housing? It really bugs me simply from the standpoint of how greedy does a company have to be to do so little reinvestment into their game?

I imagine they will never release this unless some other MMO manages to threaten their position. At which point they'll vaporware the housing for a few months just to screw the other MMO, and then eventually release it to really hurt them (or someone else entirely).

-Muckbeast
http://www.muckbeast.com
 

What does "boni" mean? Is that a weird pluralization of "bonus?"
 

Muckbeast, I see your point and partially agree with you.

The counterpoint is that the only way to spend more money on the game is hire more people. World of Warcraft has a team of ~150 already, and I wonder if you don't hit a point of diminishing returns around that size, particularly when you have software that has to be always up like an MMO. (i.e. additional employees are adding almost as much work in bureaucracy as they add in actual content). I had a friend who worked at MS for a while, and he certainly thought it had become a major problem with their company that was partially responsible for producing products like Vista.
 

Housing. What use is this? To me it sounds like just one other way of further separating those who have time and those who don't. It's already done somewhat for the epic fliers. I still don't have one, despite being a fairly active player who had been through most of the content up to end of Black Temple before the exp. I just don't sit there and perform repetitive tasks to earn gold. (dailies, farming mats for crafting stuff, working the AH like a stock market.) I play the game to see new stuff, for the social aspect, and for the challenges of progressing. I don't wanna buckle down and put in 100's of mindless hours just so I can buy a house.
And where are you gonna put them? the towns are not big enough, and I doubt that people will want them in the middle of zones where people can sit out on their porch, drink a beer, and watch the next group come along to kill whoever, like some kind of country club with houses lining the fairways. It seems like something out of place in the game. Are they gonna be strictly cosmetic, or will you get some real advantage? That's not going to have a positive effect on drawing new audiences. "I've gotta start at level 1? Grind to 80 through all these deserted zones? And what,you say? Save 1000 gold for a mount? Oh, that's not all? 1500G to fly in cold weather? And 5000G for a fast mount so I can fly fast? And 100000 gold for a house so I can keep up with the Jones's. Forget it. I'll go play something else"

And what happens when all those subprime mortgages come up? Mass WoW forclosures?
 

What does "boni" mean? Is that a weird pluralization of "bonus?"

Weird? That happens to be English.
 

Please don't cite Wikipedia for correct word usage. Per any dictionary you can name - per Wiktionary, even - the plural in English is "bonuses."
 

Nissl, you do get diminishing returns with large team sizes, but in something like this, it's fairly easy to compartmentalize things. The "housing art team", for instance, can work pretty much in a bubble, so long as there is a style guide and periodic reviews. Code could be similarly compartmentalized. There would certainly be a need to correlate everything at some point, but it could be done.

Still... 150 people on WoW? They can't all be creating new content. If they are, they are already suffering from some diminishing returns and management boondoggles.
 

I found this site very valuable to find "easy" upgrades for my character. It compares you to similar characters, and shows items that lots of other players are wearing (and therefore should be easier to get).

http://www.wowpowerscore.com

The site isn't pretty, but it is useful.
 

Boni is not the plural of bonus. It's "bonuses." I know that's a nit and you're not a native English speaker. The Wikipedia article you linked is a disambiguation page with nothing about your usage.

Regardless (or "irregardless" if you prefer), I enjoy your blog. :)
 

I don't know how silly this sounds, but I recently was having a conversation within my guild about housing, and we came up with the idea for guild housing. This housing would be set up somewhat like instances (where you could hearth to), and just a commonplace for everyone in your guild. I thought it would be really cool.