Want a custom avatar to use on Resto4Life.com whenever you comment? Simply do the following:

1. Visit http://site.gravatar.com/signup.
2. Enter your e-mail address and click Signup.
3. Check the e-mail account with which you’ve registered for an e-mail from support@gravatar.com.
4. Click the activation link supplied.
5. Enter a password and confirm it.
6. Click the Manage link at the top of the page.
7. Click on the Add a New One link at the bottom of your My Gravatars page.
8. Select either My computer’s hard drive to use a file stored on your computer or An image on the internet to enter a URL of an existing avatar.
9. Select a file or enter a URL and click Next.
10. All done!

Now whenever you post a comment on Resto4Life.com (or any other site using the Gravatars plugin), your custom avatar will appear!

Note that due to caching performed by the Gravatars plugin, your new Gravatar may not be immediately visible but should show up within a few minutes.

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From the VSX Team Blog:

AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft is now available for free download, an open-source development tool aimed to bring the Visual Studio experience to building World of Warcraft add-ons. This WoW development environment uses the new free Visual Studio 2008 Shell isolated runtime and does not require any version of Visual Studio to be installed or licensed to download, install, and use it. Stay tuned to the blogs of Dan Fernandez and James Lau for upcoming blog posts about this project. Key features of AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft include:

• Visual Design Surface
• Lua Code Editor
• FrameXML IntelliSense
• Auto-Generate Table of Contents
• Auto-Generate Lua Events
• Many other goodies

I imagine this will open up the world of addon development to many, many veteran programmers. As a VB.NET developer, I admit the idea of developing using Visual Studio is pretty tantalazing. I might yet get that DDR-esque Lifebloom rotation mod I’ve always wanted!

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While the number of Hunter blogs once rivalled the Druid blog community, I think we’ve now pulled ahead by a fair margin. Clearly, Druids are jabbermouths. I have three new blogs to share today, all of which hail from friends across the Atlantic.

• // erumel; Niniel of Kilrogg (EU) is apparently a C# programmer, though I’m not sure why he’s opted to comment his blog out! While the majority of her blog postings concern World of Warcraft, you’ll find more than only that with posts on music and his life outside the game.
• Deeply Druidic Deeply Druidic is a brand new blog written by Mauritius of Burning Steppes (EU). Mauritius has experience with all walks of life as a Druid as well as PvE, PvP, and raid content.

One more, this time from an American player, Razorbaxftw of Medivh:

• Three Druid Noob One player, three Druids, one from each spec (Feral, Balance, and Restoration). This blog is destined to be an interesting one to follow! Plus, he has a really cool picture of one of his Druids in the sidebar.

I’m also adding Druid Tips of the Day, an article by well-known PvPer Hafu published by PvPSource, to the resources section of my blogroll. It details strategies for dealing with specific 2v2 matchups, and here’s a snippet of what she’s written:

Warriors: After the Intercept, Travel Forming away is great. Be ready to shift quickly out and into Travel Form multiple times as most good Warriors will be ready to Hamstring and Piercing Howl. If the Warrior got out of combat, feel free to rank 1 Moonfire them — and run. It’ll take them a second to switch back into Berserker stance — and that’s if they have Intercept up.

Oh, and this is a sleeker, faster alternative to using the WoWArmory. You can read Amanna’s very detailed writeup on the various features over at Adventures in Azeroth. Neat!

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... is a 4.5-inch scale figurine of Phaelia decked out in full Season 2 armor

And thanks to FigurePrints, I will be able to purchase one for the price of $100 + $15 shipping. FigurePrints is a new company that's very cleverly applied a manufacturing technology formerly used to quickly prototype machine parts to the MMO vanity industry. They offer the creation of a customized resin figure of your character wearing whatever gear you have in your possession (they tie into the Armory to pull down your gear) in a pose of your choosing. There's a brief discussion of the technology available on YouTube.

The idea of this service is excellent. I have no doubt they will do very well, especially if they begin taking orders prior to Christmas (although there's little chance of these orders being processed prior to December 25th). There are a few limitations to it, however:

• Price: $115 is pretty prohibitive for most, even if the end result is amazing. I know I'd have to pool birthday and Christmas to get one for myself, and that would mean no computer upgrades or shoes!
• Gear Selection: Because the company keys off of your Armory profile, you have to have the items you want displayed actually in your character inventory (and worn at the time they perform your character scrape). Since this is a vanity item, I see no reason that they shouldn't allow you to specify whatever gear you'd like. If you happen to be nostalgic about the Stormrage set that you've long since vendored for the sake of bank space, you should still be able to get a figure crafted wearing those items. What if you never managed to complete your Tier X set but like its aesthetics? I worry that not allowing this feature may turn off many potential customers.
• Time: Once you've completed your order, you are guaranteed receipt within 90 days. A character can change appearance drasticially in 90 days, making the option to select whatever gear you want even more important.
• Character Appearance: Face, hair color, hairstyle, piercings, etc. are character customizations that cannot be datamined from the armory XML output but are absolutely essential to allowing you to individualize your character, and consequentially your figurine. I haven't been able to determine whether these customizations are included in your order. As a licensed Blizzard product, however, I suppose its possible that Blizzard is willing to provide them this data, even if you aren't asked to provide it when ordering.
• Size: Because the figures are created to scale, the gnomes turn out really tiny, even though you pay the same price. I'm glad that I play one of the largest race so that it would be easier to see the detail of my character.

Overall, I think this service is an amazingly cool application of a technology that was previously put to more mundane uses. I would LOVE to be able to get one of these created of Phaelia, but I'd have an incredibly hard time deciding which pair of shoes to wear ... and talking Mr. Phae into it.

Female Human Druid (Resto)	Male Night Elf Hunter

P.S. In case you were wondering, this was not a paid advertisement. I just thought that some of you might find this service as interesting and appealing as I do!

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There’s an interesting blog-based “challenge” floating around where authors are sharing “5 Gaming Lessons” (learned in however long they’ve been playing). To give credit where it’s due, I first read about this idea over at The Bronze Kettle though they credit The Game Dame for the original idea and several others have risen to the challenge. While not an exact match persay, this idea has encouraged me to dust off one of my long-waiting drafts, one where I had started writing a letter to myself to enclose with my first copy of World of Warcraft. The idea for this letter was to include the pearls of wisdom that would otherwise have to be hard earned.

Dear me,

1. I know the video of the pretty pink elf shapeshifting into a sleek black panther is what makes you think you want to play a Druid. Little do you realize that you’ll end up spending less than 1% of your total time in a Feral form.
2. Yes, you’ll choose a Druid, but no, you won’t wear any of the gear that you can craft using the Leatherworking skill. Yes, I know you want to pick it up anyway because it seems Druidy. No, it’s still a bad idea. Be happy with Tailoring. At least you can make yourself pretty dresses. And later, some of the best armor for you will be made of cloth, not leather. Go figure.
3. Don’t agree to help start a PvP guild. You don’t even like PvP. And you won’t until the game changes to make PvP more Healing-friendly. That won’t happen until the release of the first expansion.
4. Don’t make 5 16-slot bags for every friend who buys the game on the first day they play. Chances are good they may never get past their trial. Try not to take it personally. Unless you didn’t listen to me and made them the bags anyway.
5. Put this box down… Okay, now look for the one that’s marked “Collector’s Edition.” It has an adorable little panda bear pet that falls asleep with his round butt in the air and cute little green Zzzz over his head! Much better. Proceed to checkout.

Your friend, You

P.S. When creating your character, don’t name them Gaelic words that no one can pronounce. You’ll end up regretting it and only be able to change it when you transfer servers.

What lessons have you learned since coming into the World … of Warcraft?

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