Method, one of World of Warcraft's top raiding guilds, has decided to take their thirst for world firsts into the world of Diablo. A three-man team from Method scored the world-first Skeleton King kill on Inferno. For those wholly unfamiliar with Diablo, that means they killed the first boss of the game on the most challenging difficulty level available.

A WoW raiding team moving into competitive Diablo is something we found surprising. Dedicated gaming is in the blood of these players, so maybe it really shouldn't be surprising.

What we're really curious to see is how many hardcore WoW raiding teams will jump on the Blizzard All-Stars bandwagon when that game launches, too. Will Blizzard All-Stars support that sort of competition when it launches? Will we see a real e-sports scene grow from it, like League of Legends currently supports? And if so, will the World of Warcraft community latch onto that, or will it be an entirely new audience?

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Filed under: Raiding, Diablo 3

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Oh, crap. The Queue is due to be published in 30 minutes and I haven't even started it. Thanks a lot, Diablo! You're ruining everything!

AbabakarOctopuce asked:

I have two level 80 toons with vanilla gear (they got to 80 through free RaF levels). I use them mostly for professions, but if I were to ever level them up, where would I find the appropriate gear to send them into Cata zones?

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Filed under: The Queue

Since Diablo II was released 12 years ago, it's safe to say that Diablo III will be the first Diablo title many people will have ever played. When we first mentioned that we would be providing some coverage of Blizzard's point-and-click dungeoneering action title, one of the first requests we received was a guide to Diablo basics. How do you play the game? What does it have in common with WoW?

We have you covered.

The core of Diablo gameplay is the mouse click. You do everything from combat to looting to movement with your mouse, and your interactions with your keyboard are extremely minimal overall. On Twitter recently, I noticed many people mentioning they were buying a new mouse specifically to use with Diablo III -- and that's not a bad idea. No, we're not talking a brand new $80 Razer Naga; we're talking some $10 to $15 thing you can pick up off of a department store shelf. You want a mouse that you're not going to mourn when your buttons inevitably give out from the mountain of abuse you're about to unleash upon them. Grab something cheap and disposable so that when it dies, you will consider it a victory -- just another technological corpse for the bone pile.

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Filed under: Diablo 3

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today's another short one. You have only yourselves to blame! Ask more questions!

@ravingsockmonky asked:

Do you think hunters will ever get more stable slots, or will we start having to release pets? :(

I think I might be a bad person to answer this question. The whole hoarding hunter pets thing is totally bizarre to me. Aren't you guys supposed to be bonding with your closest companion, not piling a thousand wild animals in a barn? That can't be healthy. Those animals are probably forced to stand in their own filth all day long while you're out having adventures. Do you ever stop and clean them? Do you take them all out for exercise? Do you even feed them? I don't think so. You hunters are all terrible. I'm pretty sure you can get arrested for that sort of thing.

That being said ... Blizzard might do it one day, I guess? The devs haven't said anything about it, but I think they grasp that WoW players have a weird pet/mount obsession going on and have been willing to cater to it so far.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue, Mists of Pandaria

At the end of days, the first sign shall appear in the heavens. Justice shall fall upon the world of men.

At midnight tonight, Diablo III launches in North America. Other regions aren't far behind (or ahead, as the case may be). The number of World of Warcraft players who will be playing Diablo tonight is astronomical; more than one million Annual Pass subscribers will be receiving the game, and countless more will be purchasing Diablo III on its own simply because it's a good game.

The Real ID and BattleTag systems have brought these games' audiences closer together than they have ever been. With all of that in mind, we here at WoW Insider feel that we would be doing our readers a disservice if we didn't provide content that will help all of you ease yourselves into your brand new game. For the next two days, you're going to see a number of Diablo-related articles and guides here on our site mixed in with our usual WoW stuff. In the long term, we plan to continue to cover major general Blizzard news from all of its games as we've always done (see our recent Blizzard All-Stars news), and the next 48 hours or so will be a little bit heavier on it than you may be used to seeing. We hope that you'll enjoy what we have to offer.

However, if you're the sort of person who has absolutely no interest in Diablo, if the mere mention of the game makes you sick to your stomach and you don't want to see anything on our site but World of Warcraft, we have a solution for you. For the next two days, all of our World of Warcraft content will be tagged "not-diablo." To filter out all of our Diablo content, just go to this link here for the next couple of days for content that's 100% Diablo-free. Treat that as our front page for awhile. Come Wednesday, though, make sure to come back to our real front page -- we won't use that tag forever, just during this Diablo blitz.

If you have any feedback on our Diablo III coverage throughout the day, please feel free to email me your thoughts at alex@wowinsider.com. Did you like what you saw? Is there something we could have done better? I won't be able to respond to everyone, but I assure you that every email sent will be read.

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Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo III for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

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Filed under: WoW Insider Business, Diablo 3

Welcome to the all-new, all-exciting weekly news recap featuring Panser of TradeChat! In our weekly recap, we'll be tackling the hottest news and whatever other kickin' rad items have come our way throughout the last week. This week's topics include:

• Ladder Phase 1 for the 2012 Arena Pass
• Account-wide mounts
• Awesome Avengers transmogrification
• WoW's next borrowed game mechanic

If you enjoyed the new show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave a comment, and come back next week for the next episode!

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items

Blizzard and Valve have been going back and forth about ownership of the DOTA title for awhile now. It's a complicated issue that's been summed up very well by Joystiq's JC Fletcher: "Which giant company has the rights to the fan-created, community-promoted word 'Dota?'"

As of today, it turns out Valve has those rights. The two giant companies have amicably settled the issue amongst themselves. Valve will release its DOTA title as Dota 2, and Blizzard will release its as Blizzard All-Stars. Personally, I'm a bigger fan of All-Stars, anyway. It gives the name some real flavor and, as stated by Blizzard VP Rob Pardo, "ultimately better reflects the design of our game."

Of course, regardless of the decisions made here, the fan community will inevitably continue calling this genre of games DOTA or some variation thereof. If you care to read the full press release regarding this agreement, hop behind the cut below.

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Filed under: News items, Blizzard All-Stars

Whoa whoa whoa, why is Alex doing The Queue on Friday? Nobody likes that guy! Get out of here, Alex!

Never.

vocenoctum asked:

I know a lot of folks that don't currently play Warlocks will try it with Mists, hopefully the changes make it fun enough to play for many. Do you think the changes are big enough that some current lock's will leave the class? (I didn't play a paladin pre-cata, but know a couple ret pal's that just ditched the class as "being too different".)

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue, Mists of Pandaria

Recently, one of the criticisms most often heard about the World of Warcraft experience relates to server population or faction imbalances -- you can't always find enough players in your level range to have a fulfilling gameplay experience. It seems as if Mists of Pandaria is going to be fixing that issue in a big way: Blizzard has just announced cross-realm zones.

Cross-Realm Zones Coming to Beta

In the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta, we're introducing a new technology that will enable players to meet up and group with other players in under populated areas of the world such as low level zones or areas that other players may have outleveled or moved on from. This technology will allow players to form a group with other players from within a select pool of realms in order to quest just like they normally would while still allowing the social structures of their home realms to remain intact.

source

For the full FAQ, head over to Battle.net, or check behind the break below.

UPDATE: Blizzard has answered additional questions in the FAQ.

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Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

Filed under: Humor, Mists of Pandaria