Gear Comparison Tools (Does This Sword Make Me Look Fat?)

I Sheep Things had trouble choosing gear and I wrote a comment to help that I was unable to post on the IST blog. I'll repeat what I said here in case this summary article helps someone.

Gear comparisons aren't exactly easy. I've got a bunch of sites that help, but figuring out the one that works best for you means looking at them all. But there they are.

The addon PAWN does a great job but it is quite complex to set up. You have to input scale tags into it to make it work. (i.e., Math!) You can look up all the scale tags I've managed to find by using the search box at the top left with the term "scale tags." PAWN can be downloaded via Curse.

I've heard Lootzor does the same thing without having to use an addon.
http://www.lootzor.com/

WOWhead has an item comparison tool.
http://www.wowhead.com/?compare

Gearwish List lets you find the gear you should have.
http://gear-wishlist.appspot.com/

Feral druids can use the Druid Wiki's gear methodology.
http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksDPSGearMethod

Character Planner helps you plan the gear you want.
http://www.chardev.org/

And this site lets you see what loot your character can use, which is another nice planning tool. Click on your class icon to get started.
http://www.wow-loot.com/

I hope all this helps. Figuring this out isn't easy which is probably why I Sheep Thing's guild mate got frustrated trying to explain their reasoning why this article is better than the other one in this situation.
http://www.isheepthings.com/blog/ups-and-downs/

Browse various realms, their players and their gear, or try on various combinations of gear/talents/enhancements/buffs/gems/ to see how stats change.
http://www.warcrafter.net/

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She Broke My Heart in the Trailer Park So I Deleted Her Stupid Warlock

WOW Insider introduces Yumfries' "Innkeeper," a sad song to lost romance. Very polished and very funny!
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/26/wow-moviewatch-innkeeper/

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Virtual Worlds Documentaries ("Another Perfect World" and "Second Skin")

We Fly Spitfires saw this documentary about MMORPGs on British TV, then found it on YouTube for us to enjoy. Note this is over an hour long.
http://blog.weflyspitfires.com/2009/06/25/another-perfect-world-watch-it-here/

Another documentary called "Second Skin" will be out on DVD and in some theaters next August. Kotaku has a five minute section up on their site.
http://kotaku.com/5304805/second-skin-coming-to-dvd-in-august

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Sargeras' Guild Application Goes Awry

Sargeras has been invited to join a guild, but first he has to fill out his guild application. Even Lords of Destruction have to do paperwork occasionally!
http://www.cwsargeras.com/2009/06/my-first-guild-application.html

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Karthias Speaks: Raid Mechanics

Andrew at Of Teeth and Claw analyzes the mechanics of raid encounters, using WOW as an example.
http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/2009/06/anatomy-of-raid-encounter.html

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Guildwatch on Thursday!

All the upcoming patch 3.2 news didn't cancel Guildwatch Wednesday, it just moved it to Thursday this week. The drama this week is mostly guilds splitting up and reforming, and there are recruiting and instance-finishing guilds galore (none on the Solo MMO Player's realm, naturally) but the highlight this week is still the guy advertising on the trade channel that he's selling his guild.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/24/guildwatch-system-error-beep-bop/

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Latency Effects (and Strategies to Minimize) UPDATED

The Hunting Lodge's Wertez tries to chart how latency effects hunter shot rotation. Surprise! DPS is effected by lag....
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/06/24/1261/

UPDATE: Wertez has added a second posting about lag/latency with strategies to minimize any latency you might get in-game with hardware and software and addon tweeks. Note that his tips are for Windows machines mostly.
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/06/25/where-does-lag-come-from/

UPDATE #2: Wertez demonstrates the use of Traceroute to check your realm latency and to look at latency of various realms if you plan a transfer.
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/06/28/how-many-hops-does-it-take-to-get-to-the-tootsie-roll-center/

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Whose Side Are You On, Boys? Whose Side Are You On?

The Solo MMO Player was traveling to a shared Alliance/Horde city today, playing as his Tauren druid, when a Level 55 Blood Elf started tagging along.

The Blood Elf made chicken noises, laughed at the Solo MMO's huge cow druid, brushed up against him and farted, etc. during the entire ten minute trip. The Solo MMO Player said and did nothing as befits a stoic bovine druid. He and the taunting Blood Elf arrived in the destination city and an Alliance player promptly shot two arrows at the Blood Elf and killed him.

The Solo MMO Player resurrected the Blood Elf who said, "Oh. I thought you were Alliance. Sorry." Then he skipped off to make chicken noises somewhere else.

Once the Solo MMO Player stopped laughing, I asked him to look up the Level 55 Blood Elf and see if he belongs to a guild. He does. It's fairly small but it does have three Tauren players, including the guild master who is a Tauren druid....

Any wonder longtime players are quitting in droves when mid-level characters can't tell who belongs to their faction? If you hang around, you will kill yourself falling out of your chair laughing.

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BBB Keeps on Tanking

Big Bear Butt Blogger describes how he tanks with his feral bear in the Culling of Stratholme instance.
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/06/22/just-keep-tanking-just-keep-tanking/

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An Addon to Look Pretty (XLoot)

WOW Insider's column on addons profiles XLoot today. XLoot makes your interface prettier. Depending on how much of a visual person you are, I can see this might make your UI look less cluttered or might give you visual clues to things. Note that there are plugins to add functionality although one is rumored to not be working.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/20/addon-spotlight-xloot-and-friends/

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The Addon Maker Speaks

Fascinating interview with Tekkub who writes a lot of addons, just for us.
http://www.nostockui.com/2009/06/14-questions-with-tekkub/#more-829

Interesting that Tekkub wants to find a guild that does old raids, just for fun. Bet there are more folks who'd enjoy doing the original content....

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Track Addon Updates at This Site

WOW Insider clued me in to this site that tracks addon updates. You can subscribe to the database through Twitter, Google Reader, RSS feeds, etc. so it is easy to keep track of what has changed. If you don't want to bother with that, you can bookmark the site and use the search box at the top of the page to find out if your favorite addons have been changed. It appears you can register with the site and then customize and save the view you get when you visit but I haven't tested this. Thank you, Fin. This will be very useful.
http://fin.instinct.org/wowmods/

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VuhDo Instead of Healbot or Grid?

Big Bear Butt Blogger has been trying out the healing addon VuhDo instead of Grid or Healbot. His experiences are laid out in detail complete with screenshots at this link. Read the interesting Comments for more information.
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/06/18/vuhdo-is-da-bomb-for-healing/

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Guild Watch Wednesday (Starring Hitler Again)

Poor Hitler is having trouble with his guild. There's background you need to understand to fully appreciate the video. Last week Guildwatch reported about Enigma and how they didn't like the 25 man progression thread of their guild. Drama ensued, and this parody video was born.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG1z_0BQLLg

There's drama in guilds Hitler doesn't lead. Aluro has been looking for a guild. He transferred to a new server to join Preeminent, then after raiding with them three times he dumped them saying they were "pretty awful." After the public trashing, other guilds *Surprise!* don't want him, so he starts a guild of his own and poaches other guilds' members but that doesn't work out so he PUGs. Finally he makes it into a new guild and guess what, he's back on the forums trashing his new guild leader. Some folks don't know when to keep their mouth shut!

I can't top how Guildwatch describes Herding Cats' experience , so here it is word for word-- "This is probably the worst story of raid ID ninja-ing we've heard yet. Herding Cats of EU Venture Co. got a Naxx-10 run together, and PuGged four folks from On Se Kova on the same server. After some issues with the PuGs, they decided to kick them out of the raid, and On Se Kova freaked out -- they trained mobs to the raid, started griefing the raid, and trying to force people out of the instance. Even when the group filled their spots and they couldn't get in the instance, they stood outside and kept trying to get in and grief for over seven hours. Finally, the raid ended up at around 3 a.m. (after starting at 5 the previous evening), and Herding Cats went to bed. Only to discover the next morning that -- you guessed it -- On Se Kova had woken up early, ninja'ed the raid ID, and finished off Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad. 12 full hours of griefing, all for two bosses in Naxx 10. Good show."

There is lots of raid completion and recruiting (of course not on the Solo MMO Player's realm) which you can read about in full here. Many, many thanks to Mike for writing this column to entertain us each week.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/17/guildwatch-were-not-even-in-his-guild/

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Wrought: Romance with a Sad Ending

WOW Insider pointed us to a nice piece of machinima telling a romantic tale that ends badly.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/16/wow-moviewatch-wrought/

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Paladins and the 969 Rotation (with History)

Honor's Code has written a brief history of the 969 rotation for pallys and analyzes how it works. I believe Honorshammer plays mostly as a protection paladin but I don't think this effects how 969 works for other types of paladins.
http://honorscode.blogspot.com/2009/06/back-to-basics-969-paladin-threat.html

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The Modern Data Center

The New York Times looks at the modern data center in depth, providing a fascinating glimpse inside those mysterious and secure windowless low warehouses I see from the main highway occasionally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Thanks to Kotaku for pointing me towards this article.

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Twink Central

Thanks to the Greedy Goblin, I've found the twinks' website. There's lots of advice for the twinks themselves and as GG says, this is the place to find out what gear the twinks want if you are a seller.
http://twinkinfo.com/

For those new to the game, twinks are players (normally pretty low level) who pursue high level gear as their main focus of the game instead of raiding or running instances. They often compete in the Battlegrounds.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Twink

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BBB says Rawr

The Solo MMO Player and I were discussing Rawr this week. Obviously BBB overheard (or he's psychic) as he has a posting about using Rawr to compare gear and look for gear upgrades on his blog this morning.
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/06/12/as-long-as-im-repeating-myself/

Here is the Rawr website if you want more information or a download.
http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr

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"There're Klingons on the Starboard Bow!"

LOL 

https://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=113897

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