This is it! In my final post to my blog I will be reviewing the overall effectiveness of the work done here. I will go into detail about the things i did that were effective, as well as the things that were not. I will also touch on how these things go be applied to future endeavors in my professional career. I will also go into detail about some of the site analytics. From most views in a week to the effectiveness of my social media promotions all things will be discussed!

I would say the most effective tool I used was the hyperlink! While I can talk about the general ideas behind certain concepts it would take pages of info to fully understand them, therefore giving people a more in depth look after I scratched the surface was both easy and effective. I would say the least effective tools I used were the widgets. They do little for someone who was already on the site as they for the most part were just linked to my different social media accounts where all I really do is talk about the blog. I feel that I should have integrated more videos into the blog as they are a fun visual way to learn about the subjects at hand, but I feel that the promotional aspect of this semester long project has stuck with me the most. I could see myself using a blog to inform potential customers about a new feature of a product or introduce them to a field of products consumers might not even know is out there!

I never had more than one visitor in a given day. However on the week of November 26th I had eight views, which was by far my best! My most popular post was my Raids page racking up 11 views, which is my most popular post possibly due to the fact that it would be an aspect of the game with which a lot of people would need advice. I would say that little surprised me about the statistical information about my site, I promoted on twitter and I typically don’t use twitter and have almost no followers so few people saw my blog.

In the wide World of Warcraft there are many different ways to stand out among the crowd! The best way to do that is to look flashy! In today’s post we will be getting into by the far the most aesthetic aspect of World of Warcraft: Transmogrification. I will show you some of my favorite transmogs that I run on my character. I will also go into a little depth about how to collect these transmogs.

To put it simply, transmogs are copied styles from armor or weapons that you might find pleasing so you overlay the look onto your own armor. There are well over a million different transmog looks for all the different armor pieces in WoW. Most of these looks are found in raids that are older content, therefore are easy to complete with little to no help at all. While these older raids drop gear that is no longer strong enough to keep up with the most current in game content, you are able to obtain the look of these pieces that you get in your appearance collection. Collecting these pieces allows you to transmog the look of them onto your current armor!

I personally enjoy transmogs and run old raids every week trying to design and put together new looks for my three characters! On my monk I run the sets from the Heart of Darkness raid and the Siege of Orgrimmar raid. On my priest I run the Absolution set from the Black Temple raid. On my Paladin I run two Different PvP sets from the Warlords of Draenor and Legion expansions. I put all of my looks on a slideshow attached to this post be sure to check it out!

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Since this will be one of my last informational posts I thought it would be time to discuss something exciting! In today’s post we will talk about mythic plus dungeons. We will talk about the different modifiers you can expect to see. Also we will talk about advancing keys and what it takes to complete that task. If you are looking for more information on mythic pluses be sure to check out this link.

Typically there are three difficulties when it comes to dungeons: Normal, Heroic, and Mythic. However once you complete a mythic dungeon you are given a mythic keystone! This keystone is given a level starting at two and typically going as high as ten. Now depending on what level keystone you have there will be a certain amount of modifiers. Levels two and three have one modifier, Four through six have two, seven through nine have three, and ten or more have four affixes.

Now the affixes which you get are different from week to week. This week for instance the affixes are Tyrannical, Bursting, Skittish, and Infested. Tyrannical increases the health and damage dealt by boss enemies, bursting damages all party members for a short time after enemies die. Skittish causes adds to attack random group members instead of the tank, and infested targets random adds and causes them to heal other enemies and upon death spawns to G’huun spawns that will infect other enemies if you don’t kill them fast enough!

 

Throughout the calendar year we take part in many holiday festivities. In the World of Warcraft it is no different. From New Years all the way to Christmas WoW has you covered for all your holiday needs! Not only is there a festive vibe in game, there are also limited time events that occur that are otherwise unplayable! In the following paragraphs I will write about some of the specific events that happen in WoW.

As of Today there are actually two events going on. One being Pilgrim’s Bounty, which is the one week long thanksgiving event. The second event is the World of Warcraft anniversary celebration, which is celebrating WoW’s 14th year in existence! For the Anniversary, Blizzard has give players that long in during the festivities limited edition toys like the miniature Corgi that will never be offered again after the anniversary. For Pilgrim’s Bounty there are multiple quests and achievements you must earn during the event in order to earn the title Pilgrim!

For the Pilgrim’s Bounty event there are multiple things you can do to get involved! The first of which would to be to partake in the festivities going on throughout Azeroth. Most of the inns throughout the game will have thanksgiving feasts in their common area, by eating from them you earn progress towards your achievements! In addition to eating different foods there are also limited time dungeon events that are available during the festival. Partaking in these events will not only help you earn your title, but also yield great rewards as well!

In today’s blog post we will be talking about raids! Raids are the highest level of end game content for Player Versus enemy (PvE) oriented players. Current content raids cannot be completed without reaching the current level cap. In addition, a player must also be part of a team consisting of no less than ten players. In the following paragraphs we will discuss more of just what it takes to complete a raid.

As of this moment, the only end content raid in the game is Uldir. however with the release of patch 8.1 on December 11th will see two new raids added to the game! In Uldir there are eight bosses that you have to finish, with each posing it’s own set of obstacles to overcome. As stated earlier you need at least ten people to finish the raid at the normal level. The ideal composition of this team would be two tanks, two to three healers with the rest of the remaining spots being composed of DPS.

It would take far too long for me to detail the strategy for every boss in the raid here, so I will start with the first boss, Taloc to give you all an idea of the level of strategy that goes into these fights! There are three phases to this fight, the first has non tank players randomly being selected and given a debuff (harmful effect) that has a ten second countdown that drops a pool of blood on the ground when the countdown hits zero. It is important for selected players to stack their pools in a predetermined area, after a short period of time one of your tanks will be targeted with the boss ability Cudgel of Gore. The tank will run over to the stacked pool of blood and the boss will run to him and drop his hammer on the pools, which cleans the pools off the ground. These mechanic will keep happening until the boss takes sufficient damage and enters phase two. During phase two the floor beneath you begins to move down like an elevator and the boss will kneel in the middle of the room. Players must stack with tanks up front, as there will be adds spawning that are detrimental to your team therefore the tanks must stop them from getting to the rest of the raid. After a short time the elevator hits the bottom and phase three will begin, which is the exact same as phase one. With any lunch you accomplished this and have now defeated your first raid boss!

Aside from this blog, there are several other websites and player built tools and sources of information that are out there. In today’s blog post I will be reviewing the blog of another brave adventurer of Azeroth! The blog that I will be reviewing today is Gnomecore’s World of Warcraft blog, which you can find a link to here. I will look into the level of depth of the information to determine if this blog is for the casual player or the more experienced! I will also talk about some of the more specific aspects that I liked and disliked from the blog.

The first thing I noticed about Gnomecore’s page was the organization of it. The right side of the page was filled with information about his past posts. It included an archived list of all his previous posts in the order that they were posted in. It also had a list for the most visited posts, some of which had thousands of views! He led off his page with a nice header that included the symbols of both the Alliance and the Horde alongside it.

I noticed that while this blog had posts about important, factual information pertaining to the game, the blog is ultimately about the poster’s personal journey through Azeroth. Which certainly isn’t a bad thing. In his over four years of updating his blog the poster has covered many of the various activities that go on in WoW throughout the year. The only thing that I think the blogger can do better is to appeal to the more casual crowd. A lot of the things spoken about in the blog would make little sense to someone who hasn’t played or spent little time playing, but overall this blog is full of interesting information that is sure to interest fans of the game!

In today’s post I will be talking a little bit about professions and the two different kinds of them. These professions vary greatly and are a great way to make money in the World of Warcraft. The first profession type that we will talk about today are gathering professions. After that, we will talk about crafting professions. Also, I will write how the two types work together!

Gathering professions are the backbone of WoW’s economy! All around Azeroth there are natural resources that lay unclaimed and that are essential to furthering yourself not only financially, but in your gear score as well. There are th

ree kinds of gathering professions: Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining. You can learn a gathering profession at level one, so I would suggest grabbing one immediately, so you can start stockpiling supplies. The more you have the better, as they wi

ll be in ample demand once you learn a crafting profession to go along with it!

There are a total of eight crafting professions in WoW, and six of them require materials only found through gathering professions. If you are an Inscriptionist or an Alchemist then you will want to stick with Herbalism. If you are a Leatherworker then you will want to know skinning along with it. Last, if you are a Jewelcrafter, Blacksmith, or an Engineer you will want to know Mining as your gathering profession. There are two crafting professions whose material

 

s are gathered in ways other than gathering professions: Tailoring and Enchanting. For

all of your professions the more time you spend learning new recipes and patterns the better things you can create. If you are looking for help leveling your professions, check out this guide.

 

In today’s post I will talk about the first major goal that players will strive to achieve in World of Warcraft: Achieving the level cap of 120.  There are many ways to go about doing this, from doing quests to diving into dungeons with some of your friends. You can even choose to take up arms against members of the opposing faction in battlegrounds or arena matches.  In addition to those that I have listed there are even more countless ways that you can gain experience towards your goal in Azeroth.  In the following paragraphs we will discuss the options listed above in further detail.

The most utilized form of leveling in WoW is questing.  Questing can involve a multitude of different things, but it always starts by picking up a quest, or mission, from an NPC (Non player character) that is marked with a yellow exclamation point above them.  A quest can have you do a multitude of things from collecting items around town, to scaring off bandits that are attacking villagers and everything in between. Whatever the quest has you doing, the reward is usually the same: Experience toward your next level, and gold and better gear for your character.

Dungeons are another great way to level up with friends and others.  A dungeon involves plowing through a number of enemies on your way to facing the final boss of the dungeon. The rewards from dungeons are great amounts of experience and very powerful and rare gear. Battlegrounds are events that you play with other members of your faction against players from the other faction. Battlegrounds are very competitive but the experience rewards and money you receive from completing them can be great depending on how well you performed in the battleground.

As of August 14th 2018 World of Warcraft has just launched its seventh expansion to the hit franchise.  As of July of this year World of Warcraft is now easier than ever to get into, thanks to Blizzard. The makers of WoW have done away with the requirement to purchase older expansions in order to play the current content.  Now for just the monthly subscription fee of $15 you can play all the way up to the newest expansion, Battle for Azeroth.  For that, plus a one time fee of $50 for the purchase of the newest expansion you are well on your way to becoming somebody in Azeroth.

After the opening cut scenes and animations you will be asked to create a character.  There are a multitude of ways you can be unique in the creation of your character. The first choice would be to decide which faction you want to align with: Alliance or the Horde.  Each side has races that can only be played when you choose their faction. After you choose your allegiance your next step would be to choose your class.

There are a total of 12 classes you can choose to play as.  To make it simpler there are three roles that need to be filled in the average group: Tank, Healer, and Damage per Second or DPS.  Every class can fill the role of DPS, but if you want to play one of the other roles you will have to choose a specific class. If you want to Play as a tank you should choose a Paladin, Warrior, Druid, Death Knight, Demon Hunter, or a Monk. If you want to run a healer you would have to choose a Priest, Druid, Shaman, Paladin, or priest. For a full rundown of all the classes make sure to check Blizzard’s official website page on World of Warcraft classes here.

Hello there!  If you are reading this that means you have stumbled onto my blog that I am writing for my Fundamentals of Digital and Online Media class.  My name is Alec Parker, I am a 25 year old Public Relations major at Texas State University.  My purpose for this blog is to give a better insight into one of the most played games of all time, World of Warcraft. At its peak, WoW had over 12 million concurrent users, which at the time in 2010 was a world record.  Throughout my time writing here I will attempt to explain the various aspects of the game and the many different ways WoW has stayed relevant to gamers around the world for almost 15 years!

I decided to choose this topic because it is something that is very dear to me. I have been playing games as long as I can remember and it has always been an escape from the stress and rigors of daily life. Throughout my time gaming no game has left a stronger impression, captured my imagination and attention more than World of Warcraft. I began playing shortly after its launch in 2004 while I was in the fifth grade. Since then, I have played off an on throughout my life, always being drawn back to the allure of the game for some reason or another.

Throughout my time writing here I hope to cover many aspects of the game. From getting started with some of the basics of WoW, all the way to the real world implications this game has had.  The information that will be posted here is intended both for people who consider themselves serious gamers, as well as people who might not have much experience in gaming or for someone who is looking for a new hobby all together! In addition to the posts that I will be writing for this page, I will also be posting links to videos and forum posts about some of the events that occur in game. I will also post online tools that are helpful for player development that are simple and easy to use!