It's brews like the Aromatic Honey Brew that make the whole Brew of the Month membership worth it. Sure, all of the bodily fluid/fume brews are pretty boring, but this month's brew? Beautiful. I can finally fulfill my lifelong dream: Get drunk while on fire and covered in bees. Alternate caption for the image above? I like my ale like I like my women. Covered in bees. I'm sure those of you that haven't tried this month's brew are pretty confused right now. What the hell am I talking about? Well, every Brew of the Month has a proc that goes off now and then when you're chugging down the booze. This month, the proc is a buff called Honey Touched. The sweet, sticky honey in the brew gets all over you, and you attract some friends. Horrible, stingy friends. Friends that put you under a Fear effect for 7 seconds. I think this rivals BigRedPriestess as my favorite Brew of the Month. If I'm gonna get wasted, I might as well do it in style. Mead and bees. Bees are stylish, right?
The week has rolled around, the planets have aligned, and it's time again for Blood Pact! Here to keep you up to date with all the unspeakable horrors perpetrated by Warlocks. Presiding over this week's dark ritual is Nick Deathcaller -- I mean Whelan. I was perusing the Blood Pact archives this week, trying to think of a topic which would be a little less dry than my last topic, and I noticed that an in-depth look at a Warlock's minions is rather over-due! I've long been of the opinion that Warlock minions are far more similar to a Warrior's stances than they are to a Hunter's pets. Hunter pets are very much a separate entity from the hunter them self. They have their own talent trees, different abilities they can train, and regardless of spec can account for 25% or more of the Hunter's total DPS in any given encounter -- closer to 50% if the Hunter is speced beast mastery! Warlock minions, on the other hand, have no customisability whatsoever, save the various talents which can be used to improve them. Often times a minion is used for no other reason than for the buff it provides -- or in the case of affliction Warlocks -- as a mana battery for Dark Pact.
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Be warned that the very end of today's edition of The Queue contains minor spoilers for the upcoming Ulduar raid zone. Everything is perfectly safe until the very last question, and even then the spoilers are very minor. Minor as in it describes a couple of the bosses found within the zone. It doesn't give away any story or plot. If you want your experience to remain pure, stop at the last question. If you don't care so much about knowing who you'll see in Ulduar, it's perfectly safe.
Dual specs have been one of several hot topics while we watch patch 3.1 progress on the PTR. People have waffled about whether they mean to spend the 1,000 gold it's going to cost, we've learned that you'll be able to do it anywhere and at level 40, and players of all ten classes are pondering what to use their second spec slot for. However, according to Ghostcrawler, Blizzard is pretending dual spec does not exist.
The Intel Extreme Masters World of Warcraft Arena tournament will be culminating at the CeBit in Hanover, Germany from March 3rd to 8th, featuring the European Continental Finals as well as the Global Finals, which will determine the overall winner of the 3v3 Arena tournament. The event closes the third season of a globe-hopping event that spanned Dubai to Chengdu to Los Angeles, and a total of $280,000 in prizes is ready for the taking.
Tomb Raider: Underworld for Nintendo PC by Eidos resumes where Tomb Raider: Legend left off and introduces a new, interactive playing environment
Lara Croft explores a wide array places, such as the Arctic, Mexico, and beneath the Mediterranean Sea
Environment is much more realistic and interactive -- footprints will be left in mud, for example, but only until it rains and then they will wash away
Melee combat system that requires players to strategically strike with offensive, defensive, and evasive maneuvers
Improved AI allows enemies and animals to make decisions based on surroundings, employ ambush and squad tactics, and even retreat if deemed necessary
The latest bad financial news from the gaming industry comes from Sega. The Japan-based publisher just announced its latest numbers and the results are not good. In fact they are bad enough that the company has announced plans to lay off 560 of its worldwide employees (Sega has about 3,100 employees). The company will record a loss of over $235 million, according to Kotaku.
In this era of an economic crisis, wouldn't it be fun to play a game that was all about capitalism? Game download site GoG thinks so as it begins adding games from publisher Enlight. One of the games is the business sim Capitalism Plus, the 1997 title that can now be purchased and downloaded for $5.99.
This patch for Need for Speed Undercover updates the game to v1.0.1.17. It features performance optimizations to address frame rate inconsistencies and enhancements to the adaptive difficulty logic to accelerate the difficulty curve for the expert players.
It's been a few month since Digital Illusions has let anyone outside their team play the game but on Wednesday the developer flips the switch once again on the closed beta for Battlefield Heroes. The upcoming free-to-play shooter game with the cartoony art style is ready once again for beta testers.