WoW Shadow Priest // Ultimate PvP gear (60)!

My other posts about shadow priests can be found here:

• Best damage geat for Shadow Priests (v2)
• Top spell damage gear for Shadow Priests
• Shadow Priest 5-Man Viability in TBC
• WoW Shadow Priest // Ultimate PvP gear (70)!
• WoW Shadow Priest // Ultimate PvP gear (60)!

Here’s a quick table of the ultimate PvP-set for level 60 shadow-priests gained solely through PvP itself!

// UPDATED ENTRY WITH TBC @ LEVEL 70 //

You can make a better setup if by getting all T3 or a mix of T3/PvP gear, however, if you hate raiding like I hate raiding, you might be interested in alternative gear bought from PvP vendors. Iit will take you a while to nab the full set but you’ll get it a lot quicker than a T3 set, I guarantee! You need roughly 160,000 honour and over 300 tokens (the tokens come much easier than the honour – buy the speedy mounts/tabards/etc. with extras) but this gear will make you a PvP force to be reckoned with. It should only take a few weeks of casual play (make sure you hit up your BG-holiday weekends for extra honour).

Let it be known this is for level 60 shadow-priests only. You could make a better set for holy/disc priests using a different mainhand and offhand as well as a few different accessories, but most of the gear is still the same. Also, I’m using the Horde versions of the items because, well, I’m a baby-eating Undead! Alliance has equivalent gear under different names/links.

One final tip, I suggest stopping XP at level 59 to take advantage of being top dog in AB/WSG. Chances are, your enemies will have roughly the same sort of gear you do and you won’t get completely decimated in 1v1 battles like you will in weaker gear at 60 vs. twinks. Enjoy!

ITEM LINKS TO THOTTBOT

Accessory

• Don Rodrigo’s Band
• Advisor’s Ring
• Frostwolf Advisor’s Pendant
• Frostwolf Cloth Belt
• Dryad’s Wrist Bindings
• Frostwolf Advisor’s Cloak

Armour

• Warlord’s Satin Cowl
• General’s Satin Leggings
• Warlord’s Satin Mantle
• Warlord’s Satin Robes
• General’s Satin Boots
• General’s Satin Gloves

Weapon

• High Warlord’s Spellblade
• High Warlord’s Tome of Destruction

MMO Guildsites // 3 Awesome Updates

Hola, you might have read my earlier review of the new MMORPG guild website hosting service, MMO Guildsites here: http://brainclutter.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/hosting-an-mmorpg-guild-website/.

Well, in the past few weeks they’ve made 3 awesome updates that just amped-up the service:

1. Community page added (http://mmoguildsites.com/blog/show/17)
2. Image upload policy change (http://mmoguildsites.com/blog/show/15)
3. Google AdSense side-block (http://mmoguildsites.com/blog/show/16)

Firstly, the new Community page, is an excellent social, value-added element to their main website.  This is the page you go to if you want to see what guilds are currently signed up with MMO Guildsites.  It only displays “paid” accounts — trial sites are still hidden.  You can sort guilds by name, date created, and game (WoW, EQ, etc.).  You can also search by keyword.  As an extra feature, you can also click the “members” tab and it will list the profiles of all “players” from all guilds.  You can sort members by name and date added as well as search by keyword.

At the time of review, MMO Guildsites had 26 guilds and 644 members.

Secondly, they’ve updated their image policy.  The original policy only allowed users to upload a certain number of megabytes per month per payment plan (Standard – 100MB, Pro – 250MB, Premier – 500MB).  Their new policy elimintates the monthly cap and introduces a TOTAL cap for your guild site:

• Standard – 1000MB (1GB)
• Pro – 2000MB (2GB)
• Premium – 5000MB (5GB)

These new caps should be more than sufficient for guilds of any size.  For instance, you can upload a total of ~10,000 x 100KB images in the Standard plan.  To augment this new image/gallery policy, they’ve also added a new sideblock feature that will display a random image from your guild’s gallery every 10 seconds (think: Ajax slideshow).

 A sideblock is a drag/drop feature you can place into your guild’s website to display information to site visitors.

Finally, they also added a Google AdSense sideblock feature as a direct result of a user feature-request.  The coolest part about this?  All revenue from the sideblock will go directly to the guild!  The settings allow users to enter their personal AdSense information and all income generated from usage skips MMO Guildsites and goes directly into the user’s pockets.  The site management makes it clear that guild members not be encouraged to click their own links because Google keeps a keen eye out for improper use of AdSense and will promptly ban exploiters.

Depending on the amount of traffic your guild page sees, this sideblock could potentially supplement the monthly fee of hosting your site with MMO Guildsites – but don’t cheat… you’ll get caught!

What feature would I like to see next?  A Google Map API that displays all guild members as points on a world map.  It’s a bit fluffy, but I think it would add another “social” element to their site.

Oh, and again, if you want to read my original review of their site, click HERE!

Cheers.

Hosting an MMORPG guild website

I HAVE AN UPDATED REVIEW OF 3 NEW FEATURES HERE! Please note that there has been a policy change for their billing system, which I cover in my newest review.

This is not a paid advertisement – it’s a “friend”ly promotion!

A couple good friends of mine from 8tasp.com finally put together their first major website — a service aimed to help host your MMORPG guild website. If you’re not interested in reading my review and would rather dive in to see for yourself, feel free to create a FREE trial or take their mini-tour.

On with the show…

As stated above, MMOGuildsites.com is a very easy way to build a website for your guild. You could compare it to Guildportal.com in theory except that the former is taking a fresh, Web 2.0 approach to the idea, while the latter is still stuck in the 90′s. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Guildportal; I think they’ve helped tens of thousands of people make a home for their guild on the web but to be honest their technology is limited and their style is dated. You want to attract guild members right?! At their cores, both services share the same vision — Easy guild management and communication – except MMOGuildsites does it with style.

Features

I’ll highlight some key features of MMOGuildsites in this review but you can view the entire list here.

• Admin Panel (You get to sit in the big chair) – A very intuitive, simple, Ajax-enabled admin panel gives you full control of your guild’s website. You can create and assign ranks (linked to permission if you desire), modify your site’s layout (2-column, 3-column, fixed or liquid, etc.) with drag-and-drop functionality, maintain your billing options, and much more.
• Theming (Pick up that paint brush and create… or trace) – So, you’ve got a great vision for how you want your site to look but you don’t know how to code HTML or CSS. No problem! They’ve built a fantastic visual themeing tool that makes customizing the look and feel of your site a breeze. Think: “paint by numbers.” You can save themes privately or publicly. To view a list of community-submitted themes, click here. Here’s one I created by using Wikipedia.com as an inspiration: Guild Wiki. If you just can’t find inspiration from within, you can actually take one of the public themes and modify it to suit your needs (kind of like tracing)!
• Components (drag ‘em and drop ‘em) – Here’s a quick list of just SOME of the components you can drop into your guild’s website through the admin panel: Shout Box (real-time chat between all logged-in members), Forums (customize your own subforums for guild discussion), Guild Applications (potentials can apply for membership directly from your guild page — great for recruiting purposes), Events Calendar (plan raids, guild meetings, or simply let people know about upcoming birthdays), Image Galleries (guild members can upload images into their own personal gallery), and a DKP System (custom-made DKP system for raiding guilds – links with Allakhazam‘s item database).

Payment Options

MMOGuildsites has 4 subscriptions:

1. FREE 7-day trial (a great way to “try before you buy”)
2. $8.99/month (gallery upload of 100MB/month)
3. $12.99/month (gallery upload of 200MB/month)
4. $16.99/month (gallery upload of 500MB/month)

Aside from the upload limits, all plans are able to use the same set of components and features and when you actually think about it, the rates are pretty reasonable. Hosting a personal site with a commercial web host/server will cost you around $10.00/month alone and you’ll still need to do all the coding and database administration. Also, MMOGuildsites uses PayPal as their payment method. What’s stopping you from having each member of your guild deposit $1.00/month by PayPal to help offset the cost of site maintenance? Additionally, you could rotate who pays for the site on a monthly basis to keep things “fair.”

Conclusion

MMOGuildsites is a tool that will help you manage your guild and enhance communication between members. While the service is extremely new (launched in early December) there are already a number of guilds using it (Enmity, Avalorien, and Mayhem just to name a few). The service is targeted at guilds from any MMORPG (Everquest, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, Guild Wars, etc.) and new features are being added all the time to compliment individual games. It puts web design into the hands of the non-programmers — though programmers will enjoy having powerful tools at their fingertips without actually having to lift a finger to “code” them.

But hey, don’t take my word for it; create a free trial and experience it for yourself.