The WoW Insider Show returns to the airwaves today at 3:30 PM Eastern time, bringing with it your host Michael Sacco, cohost Matthew Rossi, and special guest and WoW.com staffer Chase Christian. We’ll be answering reader emails, shootin’ the breeze, and, of course, discussing the week’s top stories on WoW.com and around the web.

And, lest we forget, they’ll talk live with the folks in the chat channel. You can email the podcast any time of night or day at theshow@wow.com, and you’ll be able to listen in to the show on the feed on our Ustream site, or after the jump.

After the break is the complete transcript of the developer Twitter chat with Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and J. Allen Brack. They talked a lot about Cataclysm and upcoming class changes, and reflect on some of the inner workings of patch 3.3. Unlike the last twitter developer chat, this chat was much more substantial and actually provided useful information for us all.

We’ve broken up all the answers into the following hyperlinked categories for your browsing pleasure.

Table of Contents

• Cataclysm
• Patch 3.3
• PvP
• Classes
• Other

Look for more analysis and updates on these answers in the coming days on WoW.com.

Q. Do you still have plans to implement guild housing?

A. Guild housing isn’t a priority. Aside from the huge development involved it gets people out of cities and into these private areas other players can’t see. We like cities to feel populated. But I’m not sure anyone expected WoW to be going as strong as it is after five years, so who knows in the future.

Q. Icecrown introduced new gameplay mechanics similar to that of platform games/consoles. Will you continue this trend in Cataclysm?

A. Many of you guys and many of us have been playing WoW for a long time. We think it’s important to keep introducing new things to keep it feeling exciting and fresh. Some things work and we try and improve them over time. Some don’t work as well and we move on. We try to never move too far away from the core experience of swinging your sword / tossing a spell though.

Q. Any plans to increase the size of the backpack?

A. Yeah, it’s something we discuss a lot. On the other hand, the madness has to end somewhere. I’m not sure I want a 100 slot bag with that much stuff to manage. We’d need to make sure you could easily upgrade the existing backpack; we wouldn’t want anyone to manage to just be without any bags.

Q. When we reach level 58 in Cataclysm on Azeroth do we need to go to Outlands or can we continue leveling in Azeroth?

A. You eventually need to do the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content. Azeroth will have a break in content between 60 and 80.

Q. Paladin armor has gone all dark and gothic. When will we see armor that better represents iconic holy warriors?

A. Northrend is a pretty dark and gloomy place. Cataclysm will have more of an emphasis on say elements and dragons.

Q. Wrath of the Lich King and Icecrown Citadel showed Blizzard using cut scenes more for dramatic purposes. Will you go back and add more for old world events?

A. We’d love to, but those things are not trivial to create so when we do more, I suspect they will be to tell new stories for Cataclysm rather than revisit old ones.

Q. With the new skins for druid forms, what is the chance that warlocks might see race/faction specific demon skins or maybe a new one?

A. When you look around, there are a lot of say imp or voidwalkers we could use. It’s something we talk about quite a bit. As for new demons, I hear warlocks are going to be getting some new spells for the next expansion…

Q. Any plans to make early leveling dungeons (Maraudon, Wailing Caverns, etc.) more new-player-friendly (ie. take less time)?

A. Yes. We can’t overhaul them all, but Cataclysm in a world with the Dungeon Finder means we should try and improve these.

Q. Will there be any more developments on enchanting as a profession? We would love to do fun things like daily quests.

A. Sounds like a great thing to add for Cataclysm. We’ll have to wait and see though.

Q. Would you be willing to make personal bank storage look more like guild storage and available to all characters on a realm?

A. This is something we discuss a lot. It actually helps with keeping mail volume down as well as a player convenience.

Q. Will mages ever get to be the true masters of ports? By added more than just the main city’s or maybe decide our own areas?

A. We’ve been growing the number of places they can go over time. We’ll probably never get to the point where mages ignore ships, mounts or flight paths.

Q. Are there plans to improve the Dwarven Racials? At this point anything is better than Find Treasure.

A. Well, we are adding Archaeology to WoW…

Q. You mentioned pet scaling being added for patch 3.3 but due to time constraints, was delayed. Will this be in the next patch?

A. We’ll try to do what we can. Technically it’s just more challenging than you might think. For Cataclysm, we have on our list that 100% of stats scale. If they don’t then certain stats just won’t be as valuable for pet classes. At the very least, we can do stuff like convert your X into damage for the pet so every stat is valuable. Getting everyone to scale with every stat better is a major goal for the class team for Cataclysm.

Q. Does Blizzard have anything in the works to offer former players of WoW?

A. Maybe we can give you a good reason to come back!

Q. You added Armor->Strength talents to discourage Plate from wanting DPS leather. Are there any plans to stop non-clothies from wanting Cloth?

A. Yes, we do have some plans.

Q. Have you thought about doing AP scaling for Thorns?

A. There’s no polite way to say this: Thorns needs some love. We just want to keep effects like this from excessively punishing fast-swinging attackers, because you know, we love rouges.

Q. Will rogues/hunters ever be able to dual wield hand-crossbows or pistols?

A. The pistol idea for hunters gets suggested a lot. It could either be an alternate to the gun / bow / crosssbow or something they use for short-range attacks. Rogues probably have plenty of weapons at this point.

Q. Are there any plans to fix the relative value of stats for certain specs? Eg.Strength being way better than Armor Penetration for Retribution Paladins or Armor Penetration being way better than Haste for Marksmanship Hunters.

A. For Cataclysm, absolutely. We’ll do what we can in the meantime, but it’s cruel to make players re-gear when they’re halfway through a new raid tier.

Q. Are there more plans for unique weapon procs as the game goes forward? How do you see this affecting min/maxing?

A. We want to keep adding procs (and other interesting mechanics) to keep the items from feeling exactly like the item it’s replacing with a few more stats. We know they are harder to balance, but that’s part of the fun.

Q. For those of us who collect tabards and armor sets, do you see a way for us to store and not use our very limited inventory?

A. Yes. We’d like to store them the same way you do titles. In general, we don’t want to punish the packrats out there who just like to collect stuff. We will have to wait and see what we can do about it though.

Q. Will we see any new world bosses in the near future?

A. I’d never say never given that we haven’t designed patch 6.0 yet, but they do present some problems for large organized groups trying to make mutliple attempts without interference.

Q. Are heirloom items and RAF going to work at the start of Cataclysm, in particular for Worgens?

A. Most likely heirlooms. For recruit a friend, we’ll have to see. We understand some players want to get to the end game as fast as possible. Maybe the realm first achievements should state “without XP bonuses.”

Q. How will you handle beta testing if you want us to wait for Worgen/Goblin 1-5 starting area quest line not to be spoiled?

A. We didn’t want to spoil them in Blizzcon. I imagine they will be in the beta. On the other hand, you can play the new higher-level zones if you don’t want to spoil it. The goblin start zone will blow your mind!

Q. Will we ever see proper physics/animation for chain weapons? Will we ever GET chain weapons?

A. We’d love to. Whips too. It’s just expensive (in terms of time) and we have to prioritize if it comes at the expense of something else (new dances maybe, or the animation for a new Cataclysm mob).

Q. Will you guys have Worgen/Goblin race change on lock until one person on the server gets Server first Worgen/Goblin?

A. We’ll probably delay it for a few weeks or months. We haven’t fully decided.

Q. What will Cataclysm have to offer for solo players?

A. Cataclysm has a ton of new quests both in the new zones and in old familiar areas. There will be just a ton to do. Also if you’re a completionist casual type, one word: Archaeology.

Q. Why not give all the races the ability to be every class?

A. We’re getting pretty close to that in Cataclysm. Some combos just don’t make sense though. Goblin paladins strike me as bizzare.

Q. Will Cataclysm bring the return of gimmick items such as vanilla’s The Unstoppable Force?

A. One of the fun aspects of looking at those old zones are the chances to try and hit up all the nostalgia for things like that. So, yes.

Q. What knowledge have you gained from WotLK/ICC in regards to your future design plans for Cataclysm?

A. That’s a broad question for just 140 characters! I’ll say one thing we learned in retrospect was that the progressive badge structure has ended up confusing. We have a simpler one in mind that accomplishes the same goals.

Q. Will you be emphasizing more Horde vs. Alliance hatred in the future?

A. It’s a major focus for Cataclysm. Neither Garrosh nor Vyrian is a major fan of cross-faction cooperation.

Q. What’s up with the pineapple wallpaper in Gadgetzan?

A. You will soon see in Cataclysm that goblins have a somewhat inscrutable sense of taste. They also like tropical drinks.

Q. Will Trolls ever get either their own capitol, or a district in Orgrimmar like the Gnome district in Ironforge?

A. Personally, I think it adds a little to the troll story that they have such an amazing cultural legacy and have fallen so far from that in recent history. That said, we have a little bit of love for trolls in Cataclysm (beyond the ability to be just about every class in the game).

Q. All specs get a proc weapon from ICC25, except Frost Death Knights and Feral Druids. Any plans to give these specs ICC25 proc weapons?

A. It’s tough when you get into the design mode of “everyone must be able to get something from every boss.” We try to cover a reasonable spread of players, but as with the Ashen Verdict rings and the Quel’delar, there are going to be some specs skipped over. We still love you.

Q. Siege weapons were a unique game mechanic for Ulduar. What was the reasoning for not adding some form of Siege engine encounter in ICC?

A. We didn’t want to overdo it. In some ways the Ulduar vehicles was our chance to show that yes we can make vehicles a lot of fun (after say the experience of Malygos). Flame Leviathan was unique. The boat battle in Icecrown is unique. Not every raid needs siege tanks.

Q. Why were party leader rewards for the random heroic daily removed?

A. We didn’t want to encourage players who had no business leading groups to do so.

Q. When will we be able to fight the Lich King?

A. After you can conquer the Blood, Frost and Plague wings.

Q. Why were no new daily quests (or something along those lines) added in 3.3?

A. We just have a limited amout of content we can do for a patch, even a big one. We try to offer something for everyone, but sometimes it’s better to deliver something awesome in one area (in this case, the raid and 3 dungeon wings) than try and add a little bit everywhere.

Q. How much will the incremental buff over time in Icecrown increase health, damage, and healing?

A. We haven’t completely decided, but something like 5%, similar to the Luck of the Draw buff.

Q. Were there any boss concepts you had for Icecrown Citadel that got cut? Any examples you can give?

A. There was early talk of different famous NPCs that could have been corrupted instead of Saurfang Jr.

Q. Arthas has been present everywhere in the expansion. Why haven’t we seen Blood Queen Lana’thel, Professor Putricide or any of the other bosses in low level zones?

A. Because we hadn’t created them yet. You saw plenty of a certain undead dragon however.

Q. Will Mal’ganis have any involvement in patch 3.3?

A. He will continue to menace you in Culling of Stratholme.

Q. Will the various faction leaders such as Tyrande and Cairne play a part in 3.3 or will they be marginalized?

A. We have a lot of NPCs active in the Northrend finale already. I’m not sure those two specifically need to play a big part. At some point your cast of characters is just too big to manage. The finale is a pretty major lore moment though. You’ll dig it.

Q. Have you considered making the Battered Hilt BoP?

A. Because better items would be available so quickly in the Icecrown raid, we thought we’d get more dynamic gameplay by letting players trade it. It also mirrored the first Quel as well.

Q. Will Ner’zhul appear at any point in 3.3 or the near future?

A. Well, he is a chunk of the Lich King now. But if you mean will he appear as an orc, we’re not ready to tell his story just yet. We have a lot of stories left to tell, but his is a good one.

Q. Are there any plans to change the Ashen Verdict tank ring to proc more often? The current uptime vs bosses is almost nonexistent.

A. We have been adjusting a lot of procs so far and this one is on our radar. Tanks still manage to avoid hits a lot, which makes the proc less useful.

Q. With all the mention of saronite, and old gods blood in the various 3.3 quest chains, will Yogg-Saron factor into Icecrown Citadel?

A. You mean your guild didn’t kill him?

Q. What are your opinions on Shadowmourne as Death Knight tanking weapon? Was it made with intention on that as well or mainly for dps?

A. Shadowmourne was designed as a dps weapon. If you can score one and want to socket Stam in it, I suggest parading around Dalaran just to rub it in.

Q. If damage and healing is too much per health ratio, then why don’t you have battlegrounds/arenas give a -30% damage/healing debuff?

A. We have been talking about solutions like that. It might feel a bit awkward, but it might also solve the problem and maybe it’s okay in the last season before an expansion to experiment a little bit.

Q. City raiding seems like a great way to promote Horde vs. Alliance PVP, will you bring incentives for this?

A. We like the idea of fighting in cities. We don’t like the idea of massive lag from having so many people in one area or players who are just wanting to play the AH or whatever getting nuked. We have some ideas for Cataclysm though.

Q. Is there talk of a fire shield spell for Elemental Shaman to use like water shield for Restoration Shaman?

A. Not at this time.

Q. Can you please explain why Feign Death is still on the Spell Hit metric, especially in raids?

A. It’s a known issue, but just has to do with the way the spell is set up. Melee and ranged attacks mean a very specific thing to the game engine. We’re hoping to be able to clean up some of this with the Cataclysm overhaul.

Q. What is your stance on fire mage single target dps in comparison to Arcane?

A. Fire mage is a little low. It’s also somewhat self-selecting because the most dps-obsessed players know Arcane is higher and will gravitate accordingly. Fire will do better on multi-target fights, but there just haven’t been a lot of those so far. (We have adds, but they come in slowly.) Ideally Fire would be closer to Arcane.

Q. Any plans on looking at Balance Druids, in particular to Eclipse procs? RNG sometimes is detrimental to our dps.

A. We don’t mind the RNG aspect that much per se, but losing an important proc because it happened at the wrong time (say just before you moved) is a problem. We have a pretty cool solution for Cataclysm if we can make it work. It makes Eclipse cooler but also gives Balance more of a kit in general.

Q. Why is it tanking or healing that makes an encounter hard or easy? There isn’t much other than high dps to consider for damage dealers.

A. There are berserk timers that usually rest on the shoulders of the dps to beat. There are adds that need to be burned down, etc. Tanking and healing aren’t that hard on Deathbringer IMO (for example). Managing the adds is the key.

Q. Both balance druids (moonkin) and elemental shaman feel like their DPS is falling behind in Icecrown Citadel. Any damage boosts for these hybrid casters currently planned?

A. We have small buffs coming in the next patch. We’ll see where they are after that when more encounters are open (including the hard modes) and once more players have tier sets and higher gear in general. We have no problem buffing them more if we need to.

Q. Following the upcoming Protection Warrior PvP nerf, do you plan to make our abilities focus on doing threat instead of damage?

A. We are applying threat modifiers where we nerfed damage. We’d also like to boost sustained Prot damage (for PvE) without adding too much burst (for PvP).

Q. Why is there hardly anything in Crystalsong Forest? It is a shame to see such a beautiful zone go to waste!

A. Yeah, it makes us sad. Part of the problem is that it sits beneath Dalaran, which ended up being more of a resource hog than we had anticipated. We didn’t want to draw too many more players to that zone. Initially the Crusader’s Coliseum was going to be there, which is why some of the quests send you there. We just worried too much about the performance hit. Anub’arak ended up working out well though in Northrend.

Q. I don’t have a question but just a thanks. Thank you for making the Looking For Group tool. It’s sooooo useful.

A. Yeah, we love it around the office too. There was a lot of pressure to get it right after the first couple of attempts were lackluster. I try not to say stuff like this too often, but I think we really got it right. (Though there are a few kinks to unkink and polish we still plan to add.)

Q. Can we expect a Canadian style pet for the Olympics this year?

A. I will put in a request today for an epic moose mount, not sure if it will make it in though.

Q. If there is one thing that you wanted to have added to ICC/WOTLK in general, what would that have been?

A. More Azjol-Nerub. Threre’s a lot of things we could have done with the underground empire, from a raid zone to a world zone. I hope we get to someday. Personally, I’m a big fan of the whole underdark vibe.

Q. Did Ghostcrawler ever give out those ponies he promised?

A. First, are you a paladin? If so, then no ponies for you. Everyone else can have a very small pony. In the DK case, a very, very small hero pony.
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Easily one of the most creative and distinctive fights in Icecrown Citadel, the Gunship Battle is something many raiders have been looking forward to since BlizzCon 2009. As a little bonus, this fight is also the source of a certain cloak that’s white and longer than your average cloak.

Here’s the basic story. As you’ve just managed to lay waste to Lady Deathwhisper, you ride the elevator up to where you’ll see the Horde and Alliance doing battle. The fight happens almost identically the same whether you’re Horde or Alliance. The only difference is which faction leader you’re attacking and which faction leader you’re following.

You pick fights with small parties of the enemy faction as you fight your way to get to your gunship. This is the same ship that’s been circling Icecrown for all of Wrath, so you’ll probably recognize Orgrim’s Hammer and Skybreaker. You’ll want to be sure to grab a jetpack as soon as you get onboard, and spend a little time shooting around and getting used to the rocket jump. Even if you’re not going to be part of the raiding party attacking the enemy ship, the jetpacks are too much fun to completely ignore. Also, as has been mentioned before, these jetpacks gave rise to the infamous Rocket Bear.

Once the encounter starts in earnest, you’ll quickly find yourself fighting the enemy in ship-to-ship combat. Let’s take a look behind the jump and talk about how this is going to work.

The basic flow of the gunship battle works like this. You’ll have a series of guns with which you damage the enemy ship. The enemy will be returning fire, but they also have a plan for how to deal with your guns. A mage will come out and attempt to freeze your guns in ice. In order to prevent that from happening, a group of raiders will use their jetpacks to rocket jump to the opposite ship and kill the mage. At the same time, a portal will open on your ship, with an enemy boarding party trying to lay waste to the rest of your team.

The Gunship Battle is a relatively easy encounter, but your raid will have to operate in three different groups. One group will man your cannons (two people in 10-man, but 4 people in 25-man). The second group will defend the ship’s desk from enemy boarders. The last group with rocket jump to attack the enemy mage. While the cannoneers will help with deck defense whenever they can, it’s important that your usual defenders anticipate and are ready to act.

The cannon task isn’t too difficult, but it’s got a trick or two to it. You have two kinds of cannon blasts. The normal Cannon Blast (hotkey number 1) will allow you to do light damage to the enemy ship, but it will also build up Heat. Once you have a hefty amount of Heat, you want to fire an Incinerating Blast (hotkey number 2). Incinerating Blast converts all of your extra Heat into damage. Be careful not to Overheat your guns, as you will not be able to use them for a few seconds if they do so.

Troops will occasionally attempt to swarm your ship. The two important abilities to watch out for are both from the Sergeants, who will hit with Bladestorm and Wounding Strike. Otherwise, the troops aren’t all that terrifying. Just grab them and burn them down. They drop from a purple portal in the middle of the deck, so your defending tank should easily be able to pick them up. If your gunners aren’t otherwise immediately occupied, they should be helping clear your deck of these boarders. As a fun little thing, all troops in this encounter will ding Experienced, Veteran, and Elite the longer they’re left alive.

When the enemy leader (Muradin or Saurfang, depending on your faction) commands it, a mage will walk out onto the enemy deck and cast Below Zero on your guns. The mage won’t do anything else, but they will be defended by troops on the ship. Have your DPS and a tank shoot over to the enemy ship and kill that mage. It’s important, though, to note that the enemy leader will keep getting stronger and strong as they stack Battle Fury. You need to kill the mage quit and get away, to let the stacking Battle Fury drop off after 20 seconds. Don’t bother trying to kill the enemy leader, because it’s just not going to happen.

In summary, basically, fire your cannons as much as you can. When the mage comes out and uses Below Zero, go kill the mage. Keep your deck clear of boarders. It sounds easy, but there’s a lot going on in the fight, and it can get a little confusing. Troops will shoot at your deck from the enemy ship, and ranged DPS can plink them dead with their free time. Keep an eye out for rune-like circles to appear on your ship, because that means Rocket Artillery is about to land there. You’ll be able to live through the Explosion easily enough, but there’s no reason to take damage you don’t have to.

The gunship battle is clearly one of the most fun fights in Icecrown Citadel. It’s an easy fight once you’ve seen everything going on, which is actually kind of a shame. It’s so much fun, I wish it went on a little longer.

Good hunting!

When the World of Warcraft Anniversary mini-site was unveiled last November, one of its features was a photo-mosaic dubbed the Battlecry which would unlock little art goodies each time a certain milestone was reached. The Battlecry mosaic called for player submissions to submit their pictures with a logo of their favored faction, with a modest goal of 20,000 player-submitted pictures in order to reveal the final artwork created specially for the event.

It’s come along rather smoothly, and some really cool player pictures have been submitted, with the seeming abundance of Horde-aligned pictures prompting us to ask where the Alliance pride was. But what really surprises me is how long the whole project is taking. When the site was launched, one of the first questions that actually ran through my head was how long it would take to fill up the whole mosaic. With over ten million active players, you’d think getting to 20,000 would be easy. Out of ten million, that’s like a drop in a bucket. But after almost two months of the site being active, we’re still only at 32% of the goal. Why?

The slow start might be attributed to the fact that submissions need to have the minimum resolution of 1024×768 pixels, a requirement inadvertently left out of the site in the first few days. Many of the first submissions might not have made the cut, and players who already submitted images that didn’t conform to the minimum resolution might not have known and didn’t bother to submit again. Another possible barrier might be the need to include a Horde or Alliance symbol — the site originally suggests that players print out files of the logos which could be downloaded from the Battlecry page. Players without their own printers might’ve hit a snag, although a quick look through the submissions show that most players found creative ways to include their respective faction logos, either through an image editor such as Photoshop or actual items such as a J!NX shirt or paint on a car.

It’s also very likely that the submissions are screened to prevent any unsavory pictures making their way to the mosaic, although the presence of multiple identical photos tends to counter that. One of the problems with submitting to the mosaic is the uploader sometimes doesn’t inform the submitter if the file went through successfully, sometimes prompting multiple submissions (which make their way to the gallery). These little hiccups aside, we’ve still only got a little under 6,500 out of 20,000 submissions in this contest.

Considering the Warcraft Twitter account has over 68,000 followers and their Facebook account has amassed over 93,000 fans in just one month, I find it rather disappointing to see that a mere six thousand people have submitted to the Battlecry mosaic. Is submitting a picture really that difficult? Are players finding it hard to include a Horde or Alliance logo in their pictures? Could it be that players aren’t comfortable sharing pictures of themselves? Or is Blizzard taking longer feeding the player submissions through their photo mosaic software?

Whatever the case, I’m personally disappointed that it’s only at 32% of the 20,000 goal considering the number of players who supposedly play the game. With the mosaic barely a third of the way done after nearly two months, this might mean we’ll only get to see the rest of the artwork by April or May. That’s no fun at all. The mosaic is likely to be the complete and fully-lit painting of the background image in the Battlecry page, which depicts Varian Wrynn, Thrall, and what appears to be the various faction leaders. From the visible painting of Thrall and Varian, one can guess that the whole artwork is possibly another masterpiece by Son of the Storm Glenn Rane. How can players resist unveiling all that awesomeness?

Have you submitted your player picture to the Battlecry mosaic? Do you plan to? Given the speed of things, it looks like the mosaic needs all the help it can get, although another batch of submissions have come in featuring players over the holidays. One of the coolest things about this project for me is getting to see all the different kinds of players who play this game from all over the world from all walks of life. I’m particularly amused with the fact that Chinese players even have a distinct fingerprint logo on their submissions. Let’s do our part to reveal that artwork. Download the Horde or Alliance logos on the Battlecry page and let your own battle cry be heard!

My guild is made up of long-time gamers, including folks who’ve been roleplaying for dang near two decades. And even though we like to style ourselves “hardcore raiders,” we all have to admit that we have those characterization inclinations from time to time. We like our immersion. We like our stories. So when we came across Lady Deathwhisper, we had to make a story up for ourselves.

As the story goes, we met and defeated Kel’Thuzad back in Naxxramas. But, Arthas wasn’t quite finished with his trusted lieutenant yet, and raised him (again) from the dead. But something went horribly, horribly wrong. Lord Kel’Thuzad returned from the grave as Lady Deathwhisper! Naxxramas was only a setback, but it was one heck of a setback!

While this little story of ours has no real basis in real game lore, the comparison between the two characters is absolutely appropriate. Both boss fights involve heavy magic damage, adds that spring from the walls to defend the boss, and more than a little coordination. I actually think Leady Deathwhisper is the most difficult fight of the first wing of Icecrown Citadel, which makes her a decent comparison to Kel’Thuzad.

Let’s take a look behind the jump and start breaking down the fight.

Lady Deathwhisper is a two-phase fight. When you approach her in her throne room, you’ll immediately note that she is standing on a stage. She’s surrounded by a big mana shield. In order to get to her, you have to beat down that mana shield. When you get all the way through the shield, she immediately becomes mobile and starts to fight you.

Of course, you don’t get to remain unmolested when you’re trying to storm her castle. As you damage down the mana shields, adds will be summoned on each side of the room. They need tanked and killed in very specific ways, or else the adds will swam and destroy your raid.

When the shield goes down, your entire raid gets to go bananas DPSing the boss. Lady Deathwhisper has a couple tricks, though, even in this second phase. First, you’ll have to dodge these translucent ghosts. If they touch their target, the ghosts will explode (for what feels like a bajillion damage). Second, she’ll be casting spells the entirety of the second phase. (Who would have thought a lich casts spells, right?) The volley raid-damaging spells aren’t too big a deal, but the single target Frostbolts are definitely tank killers. Those will have to be interrupted.

With that quick summary out of the way, let’s start breaking down Lady Deathwhisper’s individual abilities.

Lady Deathwhisper – Phase 1

• Mana Barrier – Absorbs all damage done to Lady Deathwhisper, draining her mana instead. This is the key ability to phase one. Once you’ve destroyed the Mana Barrier, you go into phase two.
• Shadow Bolt – Inflicts Shadow damage to the current target.
• Death and Decay – Inflicts Shadow damage every 1 second to enemies within the area of the spell. The spell lasts 10 seconds. You can tell it by a bubbling green area on the ground.
• Dominate Mind – Mind Controls 1 player, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. Lasts 12 seconds. (This is another call back to old Kel’Thuzad.) This effect only occurs in 25 man.
• Dark Empowerment – Empowers a random Adherent or Fanatic, causing them to deal area damage with spells. Also makes the target immune to interrupts.

Lady Deathwhisper – Phase 2
Many of the abilities are the same as in Phase 1, but get turned up a notch.

• Frostbolt – Inflicts Frost damage to the current target. Can be interrupted. This spell is a tank killer, and should absolutely be interrupted.
• Death and Decay – Inflicts Shadow damage every 1 second to enemies within the area of the spell. The entire spell lasts 10 seconds. Again, this is the bubbling green color on the ground. This is fire that you shouldn’t stand in.
• Dominate Mind – Mind Controls 3 players, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. Lasts 12 seconds. The effect is the same as in phase one, except now it can grab up to three players. It’s best to crowd control them, so that you don’t lose allies by killing them.
• Touch of Insignificance – Reduces the target’s threat generation by 20% per application. Stacks up to 5 times. This is the big gimmick of the second phase, which we’ll discuss in depth later. Suffice it to say that the Touch of Insignificance insures you’ll need two tanks.
• Summon Vengeful Shade – Summons a Vengeful Shade from the body of a dead Adherent or Fanatic. There are angry angry ghosts! If they catch up to their target, they explode in a Vengeful Blast!

Summary
Phase one of the Lady Deathwhisper fight is a practice in add management, and your raid’s ability to coordinate which type of DPS attacks which kind of add. There are two kinds of adds, who will spawn in separate sides of the room. You have Adherents and Fanatics. Burn them down and blow them up, as a general rule. In and of themselves, they don’t have many hitpoints, and they’ll die pretty quickly.

However, Lady Deatwhisper has inherited the ability to raise the Adherents and Fanatics from the dead. When that happens, they gain resistance to either magic or physical damage. While it’s technically 99% resistance, I think it’s easiest simply to say “Pull out, Wedge! There’s no good you can do back there!” There’s really not much damage you’re going to do them if you’re trying to damage the wrong type. Essentially, when the adds are reanimated from the dead, physical cannot effectively damage the Fanatics, and magic can not damage the Adherents. So your physical damage should be attacking the Adherants, and spell damage should be attacking the Fanatics. You’ll especially want to kite the Deformed Fanatics, since they’ll explode when they die.

If you can balance the damage to the two types of adds, and still keep damage on Lady Deathwhisper’s mana shield, you’ll be doing great. Keep blowing up that shield until you enter Phase Two.

Phase two is high paced, but a little easier to coordinate. First, make sure that you keep your interrupts handy, and knock down that Frostbolt. Don’t let her get it off. While most tanks in contemporary gear levels could live through it, they’d need to be fully topped off in health and ready to take the blow. And any other damage would pretty quickly kill them.

The mind control issue is a real one, especially if it snags your healers. However, if you’re rocking a fight against Lady Deathwhisper, you should already be familiar with this dynamic from Kel’Thuzad. If someone gets mind controlled, do not kill them. Use some form of crowd control to keep the enslaved person from wrecking your raid. The effect only lasts 12 seconds, so you should be able to handle it.

Lastly, Vengeful Shades will continually spawn from the dead bodies of the Adherents and the Fanatics. Simply run away from them. It might help to have a raid spotter keep an eye out for the ghosts, and shout out warning when they get near someone.

This fight will feel intimidating, but it’s a coordination check. Once you get the dance steps down, you shouldn’t have much trouble. Good hunting!

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
For auld lang syne

Arcane Brilliance: How to be a good PUG mage: “It was like some kind of idiot convention, and I was the keynote speaker.”

Totem Talk: On unique gearing and gear consolidation: Rossi has mixed feelings on the benefits of gear consolidation, particularly because +spellpower mail is far better itemized for Restoration, and Enhancement shares gear with hunters, who don’t want the same stats.

Official patch 3.3 confirmation and patch notes: Patch 3.3 went live on December 8th to universal acclaim, and the enormous popularity of the Dungeon Finder took everyone by surprise.

The lore of patch 3.3: A fantastic joint effort between Adam, Alex, and Sacco to bring you the background on how patch 3.3’s story came about.

The Queue: A vote has been initiated to kick your dog: Yeah, it was a good edition of the Queue, but I’d have put it here anyway because the title was great.

Ready Check: Icecrown Citadel introduction quests: We got an endless series of questions from players on the new 5-mans; Gray undertook to answer them all.

How the WoW community is about to push the self-destruct button: Harsh but true words from Adam on the degree to which most reasonable people are utterly disgusted with the idiots infesting the forums. Unhappy with something in the game? Addressing the issue politely usually works better than working yourself into a frothing rage.

Why you don’t have freedom of speech in WoW: The follow-up. Maybe we should start a constitutional law series on the site? Just a thought.

The single greatest thing that has ever happened in this game: Two words — ROCKET BARE.

Ask a Faction Leader: High Shaman Rakjak: “Stop looking at Rakjak wife that way. She out of dwarf league.”

Breakfast Topic: What kind of PUG are you?: I think this was the first article in which we (and commenters) noted the proliferation of “silent but deadly” PUG groups through the new Dungeon Finder.

WoW.com’s top ten stories of 2009: We looked back over 2009 and picked out the issues that wound up getting the most attention from the community.

Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week WoW.com brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? Leave a comment below!

It’s nigh-ubiquitous in Wrath of the Lich King. You can pull it out of the ground pretty much anywhere. It’s crafted into armor and weapons from powerful epics to crafted items to increase our skills. It makes up the walls of Icecrown Citadel, and the bones of Malykriss, the Lich King’s planned replacement for Acherus. It makes up the bulk of the Scourge’s material for its mindless warriors as well as its fortifications and siege engines, and the Vrykul even presses the living into slavery in Icecrown in order to meet their master’s demand for more and more of it. But this is no ordinary metal: the Tuskarr call it the “Black Blood of Yogg-Saron” and whisper in hushed tones that it may yet shake the pillars of Heaven. (Well, I assume they do. Fella named Jack Burton told me that.)

Unlike cobalt and titanium, the metals that seems to occur naturally in Northrend, saronite’s presence is due to the presence of a trapped old god. As you no doubt deduced from the name, Saronite is nothing less than a creation of the terrible Yogg-Saron himself. The enslaved miners toiling for the Vrykul near Ymirheim eventually go mad, and even if freed, hurl themselves into the depths to seek communion with the god of death. In his hubris, the Lich KIng seeks to prove his mastery of death, his transcendance of the state by exploiting the products of Yogg-Saron’s imprisonment.

But as Yogg-Saron himself says, “No king rules forever.” And as we storm the very gates of Icecrown Citadel and make our way through the Forge of Souls, past the Pit of Saron where even deeper veins of Yogg-Saron’s Black Blood are unearthed, and stalk the Halls of Reflection themselves it seems clear that the dependence of the Scourge on the death metal may be its undoing… if it isn’t ours first.

You first start running into Saronite early as you proceed through Northrend. In Whisper Gulch in the north of Howling Fjord you’ll run into madmen who have fallen to the siren call of the old god via working with the tainted metal. Both the Alliance and the Horde have their difficulties with these lunatics, and both are understandably intrigued. While Yogg-Saron’s influence pops up again in the Grizzly Hills, that doesn’t seem directly related to saronite itself, but rather the roots of the failed world-tree Vordrassil penetrating into Yogg-Saron’s prison. Still, the madness of the Grizzly Hills furbolg and the corruption of Ursoc bear striking similarities to saronite’s effects.

In the Dragonblight both the Horde and Alliance run into saronite and its effects. Borus Ironbender sends Horde players to investigate the Scourge’s weapons and to retrieve samples of the so-called ‘Black Blood of Yogg-Saron’ (it helps if you bring your Six-Demon Bag for this) while Alliance players discover their new saronite mine is overrun with the Scourge and confront the mystery of this strange bleeding ore. The corpse of Slinkin the Demo-Gnome also provides a journal detailing the strange, almost contemptuous manner in which those few Scourge who can think for themselves refer to Yogg-Saron even as they mine up the metal associated with him.

Saronite makes a return appearance in Zul’Drak as players raid a crashed Scourge necropolis in the quest Pure Evil, which gives players a chance to watch the luminaries of the Argent Crusade try their level best to defeat a small chunk of ore and fail spectacularly. The interesting thing is, by this point if you’re a plate class you’re probably wearing some saronite gear or at least have been working it for some time if you’re a blacksmith. (Not even counting epics or the various saronite gear that starting Death Knights acquire, there’s a lot of saronite gear in the game for leveling characters.) The discovery that you’re wearing the hardened blood of an old god on your head or crotch or what have you has been detailed before (Disgraph focuses on a different material explanation for saronite so if you’re offended by poop jokes, don’t click that link.) but in all seriousness I have to believe personally that the entire explanation for saronite has to creep people out just a little.

There’s tantalizing links between Icecrown and the Storm Peaks, especially Ulduar, that revolve around saronite. Darkspeaker R’khem in Icecrown’s Saronite Mine is held captive by the Vrykul toiling away for the Scourge, and like General Vezax he appears to have saronite for blood: Vezax himself comes right out and says that the Black Blood of Yogg-Saron courses through him, giving rise to vaporized saronite that can even coaelsce and attack as an animus. This, combined with the madness that those exposed to saronite for long enough, brings questions: is the end result of saronite madness and corruption transformation into a faceless one? Are the insane miners in Ymirhelm the source of the faceless ones patrolling the old Nerubian city beneath Icecrown Citadel? Is Vezax himself a transformed entity, changed into a walking monstrosity by exposure to the elder god’s blood, tainted and twisted by saronite?

Considering I’m carrying around two axes I got in the Pit of Saron, maybe I should be considering this more closely.

To some degree the Scourge seem immunized to this process of corruption due to their being dead already. Herald Volazj, who is at war with the Scourge in Ahn’Katet on behalf of his master Yogg-Saron, seems to make statements that indicate that the Scourge stand apart from both life and death. (His entire quote list may be found here.) While the quotation in question could refer to the old gods themselves, considering that Ahn’Katet is under attack by the Scourge the phrase “They do not die; they do not live. They are outside the cycle.” at least could be aimed at them, and it could explain both why the Scourge can make such free use of saronite and why they prove so difficult for the servitors of the old gods to defeat. If they’re immune to saronite corruption, one of the best weapons of Yogg-Saron’s servants (turning your enemies into allies) is lost, while the Scourge themselves can perform that very same trick by killing your own minions then raising them as undead. Saronite corruption, a powerful weapon of subjugation, seems to have its teeth pulled when dealing with those who stand outside the very cycle Yogg-Saron exemplifies as a god of death.

As we march into Icecrown Citadel, saronite continues to make its presence felt. Despite Yogg-Saron’s ‘death’ in Ulduar (raise your hands if you think he’s really dead… yeah, me neither) the Scourge continues to mine the stuff out of the Pit of Saron at a prodigious rate. It’s used as material in the reforging of Quel’Delar, which turns out to be a bad idea (hey, maybe we shouldn’t reforge this sword out of the solidified essence of a god of pure evil… you think? Maybe?) and it’s used in the creation of Shadowmourne by the Ashen Verdict, who claim to have finally figured out a way to bend saronite to their will instead of being bent by it. And of course, every step you take in Icecrown Citadel, every weapon or metal armor you loot from the fallen enemy, you’re surrounded in the pulsating, breathing metal forged out of the black blood of death itself.

I’m sure by now it’s pretty much no secret whatsoever that half the team, myself included, spent a good part of the waning days of Patch 3.2 enamored with Dragon Age Origins. Maybe it’s the innocent charm of the leading man, Alistair, the deep and involved game world, or the fact that Marilyn Manson totally warned us that this was gonna be big, but I’m in deep. Patch 3.3 is finally dragging me back to WoW with its pure awesomeness, but Dragon Age is still pretty fresh in my mind, and there’s more DLC to come.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot as I play though, is comparing the game to WoW. Single player RPGs have a lot of things that MMOs haven’t quite figured out how to duplicate yet. Storyline and lore is a big one. Blizzard’s gotten a lot better at the whole idea with phased content and big events like the Wrathgate, but a single player RPG, with an audience of one, can shake up the status quo a lot easier.

You can start up a romance with that major NPC because hey, it’s not like there’s thousands of other player characters who would also like to sex up Jaina Proudmoore in a single player game. You can save the countryside from demons, and have it have a long term effect. Houses and people who you saved from destruction one play through may be gone the next because you failed to save them, and incurred permanent changes on the game world as a result. Again, phasing does somewhat address this idea, but in an MMO, it still creates an essentially homogeneous environment for all players.

One thing that I do love and that I do wonder if MMOs shouldn’t try to duplicate is the in-depth conversation trees that a lot of single player RPGs use. Lately, Blizzard’s been shunting a lot a of lore off into the comics and novels, and while I love a good novel, don’t get me wrong, it does cause some disconnect with the approximately 9 million players who won’t read said novel or comic book. Why should we be invested in characters who had so much of their character development completely off screen?

I’m a fan of show not tell, but all the same, being able to talk to more key lore NPCs and having a conversation tree that helps you get a grasp on their personality and beliefs and history would go a long way to making the game feel more immersive and getting everyone on a same page (or at least on the same book) lore-wise.

Of course, maybe single player RPGs could stand to learn a thing or two from MMOs. In Dragon Age and Mass Effect and other such single player RPGs, I’m struck at how generic all the armor usually is. There’s exceptions, sure (mostly in plate armor), but I wouldn’t mind a bit more variety. Then again, sometimes more variety just gets you the tacky fluorescent clown suits of the BC era, so hey, maybe it’s not that bad.

Anyhow, I’m curious if anyone else has done their own comparisons of RPG types. What do you see as some of the key differences between MMOs and single player RPGs? What would you like to see either type do better, especially as it pertains to lessons learned from and by World of Warcraft?

Unholy

It may be that we’ve more or less achieved normalcy in unholy PvE DPS once again, at least until Cataclysm. You can now go back to a full classic unholy spec and rotation, grabbing Epidemic and Reaping along with your Scourge Strike. Thus you’ll be going back to a more or less classic Unholy rotation, although Glyph of Scourge Strike remains more or less not very useful so you’ll still do a decent amount of disease refreshing.

A Good 17/0/54 build will serve you well. Should you need it, you can take a couple points out of Bladed Armor and move them elsewhere, say, to Improved Unholy Presence if you feel you need to move faster, or to Ghoul Frenzy if you have no luck with keeping your Ghoul alive despite the now even higher AE damage absorption on Night of the Dead. It probably speaks to how milquetoast our glyph selections are right now that Glyph of Icy Touch remains the best even for an Unholy Build, but hey. At least we got our rotation and mostly full use of our tree back, and I’ll take that.

Surprisingly, Necrosis is mostly out of the picture for Unholy DPS in the latest build. While it does technically do a slight bit more damage than Bladed Armor on single targets, Bladed Armor provides power for AE attacks and provides a nice bridge to grab Dark Conviction, which is definitely better to get in the latest patch.

Itemization-wise, it’s worth noting that haste is pretty much dead. Since the new old Unholy rotation no longer requires squeezing in all those abilities in approximately 10 seconds, among other things, haste just doesn’t do it for Unholy anymore. You’re now better off pumping critical strike rating to go with your strength, followed closely by expertise. Armor penetration is also a pretty solid stat for Unholy DPS now that Scourge Strike is part physical damage. All this may mean you’ll want to re gem or swap some gear if you’ve been stacking haste like a good little Unholy DPSer, but luckily, you’ll probably be upgrading it in the new patch anyway, be it via the new 5-mans, badges, or by raiding the citadel itself.

Frost

Frost, for the most part, abides. It’s pretty much top of the heap now for dual wielding builds. Seriously, I’m sorry Unholy fanatics, but if you want to dual wield, you’ll have to switch to Frost to be as effective as you can be. Otherwise, there’s not much to report as far as drastic changes. The basic Frost/Unholy talent build remains about the same. It’s not that Unholy dual wielding has been nerfed too bad, but Frost is just too solid to justify focusing on Unholy now.

The one place there is some welcome new news is on the dual wield tanking side. Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle now officially comes in a one-handed version, so you can start in your dual wield tanking career even earlier. Also in good general news for Death Knight tanks of all stripes, Rune Strike is getting a nice general threat buff.

Blood

Blood still reigns supreme in the single target DPS department and is still the preferred spec for raiding DKs who don’t need the AE or utility of Unholy DPS, so not much has changed here. Just stick to the classic 51/0/20 build and keep on plugging along, stacking strength and armor penetration and taking names, and you’ll do fine. If you have given blood a whirl lately, check out Rossi’s recent guest stint on Lichborne, where he gave a pretty good breakdown of why Blood’s worth trying out for DPS.

And the Rest

There have been, of course, a smattering of other minor changes. You can read about them some more in past issues of Lichborne and in my initial Patch 3.3 death knight PTR roundup. Unholy Blight still sort of sucks, Army of the Dead is still on a lower cool down (and we have tips on how to use it in a recent issue of Lichborne), and Bone Shield is still back to 5 minutes, which is pretty sweet. Overall, preliminary reports suggest death knights should be sitting pretty.

It’s Patch 3.3. Now What?

So the final question to ask for a Death Knight is pretty simple. Now that you’re on the servers, what do you do? Here’s a few suggestions to start you out.

First, check our Emblem of Triumph gear guide to see if you need anything, even if it’s just an extra set of tier 9 armor to fill out your off-spec gear. I’ve been focusing on DPS lately, so I know I’ll probably do some marathon heroic running to get my tank gear caught up. With the LFG and random dungeon tools, it should be pretty easy to get the group to go tear through some heroics and get those badges. We did the math on that in a recent edition of the Queue, so we know of what we speak.

Of course, getting yourself attuned to the new 5-mans is a good idea, especially since, if you’re not a serious raider, you may find an upgrade or two in there. We have a quick guide to the attunement process if you need that (and don’t mind the spoilers).

Of course, if you have an Icecrown Citadel raid group, well, that’s pretty much set for you too. If you don’t mind spoilers, we have a quick rundown of the bosses and their basic abilities you can peruse to help get you ready for raid night, too.

The Icecrown Playground awaits, so go to it and enjoy this last patch before the fall of the Lich King. In the coming weeks, we should have gear and strategy guides for the new dungeons and raid, and sooner than you know it, it’ll be time to start analyzing information from the Cataclysm Beta. Until then, have fun storming the citadel, everyone.

All the World’s a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles.

Roleplaying is a journey of trust you take with strangers. You may now and then start out with a group of people you know in real life, but for the most part, the people you roleplay with have no idea who you really are, or why you are sitting here at the computer. You can tell them if you want to, but most people don’t ask. Roleplayers tend to keep personal details private, and don’t intrude on one another’s space.

Besides, other roleplayers don’t necessarily care that much about who you “really are” either. They’re there to get to know your character, not you as a person, unless your character first makes a very good impression and they decide that they actually want to be friends as real people. Even though you respect each other as people who share the same interest, there’s still a distance between you which either (or both) of you may wish to maintain.

And yet, the relationship you have is one of trust. It’s not at all at the same level as a best friend of course, but you still have to trust one another in a very creative sense — you rely on each other to create interesting things for your characters to share with one another. You’re not just buying a shirt from a salesperson or holding the door for a passerby — you’re exchanging behavior and language in an unpredictable and totally interconnected way. Any little surprise a stranger brings to an interaction may completely alter the whole game session and stick in your mind as one of your most memorable gaming experiences. Roleplayers have to trust other roleplayers to help make those experiences positive, even without knowing anything at all about one another. Sometimes two characters can even become very close friends, even though the real people behind them do not.

“Anonymosity” defined

The word “anonymosity” first appeared in my head as I started thinking about all the people I’ve met in WoW, and how few I actually know by their real world names. I thought for a while that I had made the word up, but it’s actually in the dictionary as “the state of being anonymous.” It struck me that anonymosity is a very important part of what being a roleplayer in WoW is all about.

Some roleplayers would disagree with me, that they’re more than happy to share their real world identity with anyone who asks, but the fact remains that they usually don’t need to. We judge whether we want to spend time together, not by revealing who we are, but by entertaining one anther with something we are not.

In the game, between roleplayers, you may find a good number of people who want to talk to your character, but do not want to talk about anything related to real life. It’s not because they are rude, nor because they have anything to hide, but because you’re both there to roleplay, not to become real life friends, just like you’re here at this website to read articles about WoW, and I’m here to write them for you.

Anonymoholics anonymous

Take my own experience as an example. When I first started roleplaying in WoW in 2005, I had a secret mission: I wanted to get inside the head of a female character and figure out why she behaved the way she did, to understand what being a woman was like. I had just suffered a very painful breakup with a woman I thought I wanted to marry, and I felt as though there was some terrible secret about women that I had failed to understand. Keeping my true identity anonymous seemed essential, because I thought that when found out I was a man in real life, then my little experiment would be ruined — they would just start treating me as a man again and I would learn nothing.

Someone who didn’t understand me at all might have felt as though I was trying to “pretend to be a woman” as if I wanted to lie to people and make them believe I was a woman in real life. Some people can’t ever play a character of the opposite sex at all because it feels dishonest to them if they allow any possibility that someone might think they are the same gender as their character. One or two MMOs out there even force you to play your own gender by sending in a digital photograph of yourself to the company that runs the game.

While I respect that way of thinking, I also think it misses out on a deeper layer of honesty, in which you learn to interact with people’s characters without knowing who they are in real life, and without having any need to know whatsoever. Just like an actor must find something in himself that really relates to the role he must portray in a film, you can learn a lot about an actor just by watching his or her movies, maybe much more than you could by just meeting that person in a line at the grocery store or something. The actor may be sharing something of his soul in a movie, but in a brief meeting, he may merely engage in a bit of otherwise meaningless small talk.

Trying (and failing, sometimes) to anonymously portray a female character in WoW was a deeply honest thing I did, because it was part of an honest question, and it helped me discover how I related, within myself, to some of the issues that women have to think about more often than men. As a man, my life is improved from being more aware about these things, and even though at the time I refused to give people my real identity, I was actually sharing an important part of my learning process with them, and to me that more honest than just playing a character who was more like myself in real life.

More layers

My hope in sharing this example from my own personal experience is to show that anonymosity in a roleplaying setting is not necessarily what you would think from watching the news and hearing horror stories about things that happen on the Internet. It certainly isn’t necessarily a recipe for rude behavior.

While I was actually trying to learn a particular lesson in life, another person might just enjoy escaping the confines of whatever stereotypes people have toward their sex, race, age, or whatever. A woman might play a male character just because she doesn’t want people to “treat her like a woman” for a while — maybe she just wants to be herself, without people offering to help her or teach her do something else stereotypical just because she’s a girl.

Another person might use anonymosity as a kind of shield to protect himself from uncomfortable emotional attachments with others. Giving away his true name makes him feel uncomfortably exposed, but through his character, he can feel safe interacting with people.

Yet another person might just want to keep the game life and real life separate, because that’s how they organize their life. It’s not that they have any reason to hide something from you — rather they just want to focus on the task at hand, and going on talking about themselves and other aspects of real life is just too much like… real life! Anonymosity, to them, just means focusing on having fun.

What’s your approach towards being anonymous as a roleplayer? Do you talk about your real life just as much as you roleplay? or do you consider your real life as a private matter you’d rather people didn’t even ask about? Have you changed from one approach to another over time?