The Magnificent Seven Samurai

Cataclysm Release Date: December 7th, 2010

2010-10-07T00:23:00.000-05:00

The end of the world is upon us.

Patch 4.0 will also drop any day now.

Cataclysm Currency Conversion Contraption

2010-09-18T22:48:00.004-05:00

Wow, alliteration!

Click Here -- This is the calculator that tells you how your various emblems, marks, badges, and points convert to the new system once Patch 4.0 rolls out (this is the Pre-Cataclysm patch, coming quite soon)

For further info on the new currency system, read these blizzard posts: Part 1 | Part 2

Enjoy!

Cataclsym CE Edition Annouced - Up For Preorder

2010-08-17T19:20:00.002-05:00

Blizzard has announced the details of the Collector's Edition for Catalcysm. The contents seem to be about the same as the previous editions and will retail for $79.99.

Furthermore, if Amazon is your vendor of choice, you can actually put your preorder in now, here: Amazon.com CE pre-order page.

More Beta Goodies

2010-08-14T01:23:00.003-05:00

While my own Beta funtimes are on hold due to not being able to download the whole client again (its 15+ Gb!) There was a new build tonight with more cool things.

They are as follows:

More Updates To the Default UI: It seems they continue to overhaul the old interface and make it much more informative; including a lot of the information we used to have to look up on forums or articles, or via mods. Its looking good.

Guild Leveling and Guild Rewards: More info on "Guild Progression" and a preview of the sorts of things we can get through it, Pets, mounts, herilooms, and so on. Pay special attention to the Dark Phoenix!

Spec Masteries: Basically, gear above level 78 will have a stat +Mastery; it boosts the power of your "spec" via a special talent. The new Mastery Talent for each spec can be found in this article.

New Models and other Assorted Fun Things(tm): MMO-Champs has a big post up with some more changes included in the new build. Check em out!

Week in Review and Upcoming Events

2010-07-06T12:25:00.002-05:00

The Midsummer Fire Festival is behind us now, and summer is in full swing in both Azeroth and here on Earth, where we aren't expecting a cataclysmic event within the next few months. The new holiday event isn't until September, so you have plenty of time to recover from the festivities.

The week's raid schedule was hectic due to the 4th of July weekend, but we still managed to piece together a few good runs.

Several different groups tried out the new raid at Wyrmrest, and discovered the dragon lurking there to be challenging. Hopefully a week and thought and preparation will help us overcome Halion this week.

The "Classic" raid didn't happen this weekend due to poor turnout on Wednesday, so we'll likely be visiting Zul'Aman this Wednesday instead. Normal start time is 8:30ish server time.

Guild ICC10 Runs occurred on Thursday as scheduled and then again on Monday night as a makeup date for the Saturday run. The Kingslayer group also took the week off due to the holiday, but should resume Sunday as well.

The Sunday night ICC25 did occur and was pretty successful. Join us this week and we'll continue to progress.

ICC Raids scheduled for this week:

ICC10:
Thursday at 8PM Server: Mains run for people not in the Kingslater group.
Saturday at 7PM Server: Gear run for alts and newer people. Please show up if you have any interest in ICC10
Sunday afternoon: Kingslayer group, attempting Sindragosa (probably 1PM)

ICC25:
Sunday at 7 Server: We need as many guildies as we can get so we don't lose loot to pugs. Don't be late!

Cataclysm Beta: User Interface Revamp!

2010-07-02T12:34:00.004-05:00

There is no doubt that WoW has had one of the best user interfaces in RPG games to date. Its easy to use and pretty clean, and infinitely customizable with addons. But its also getting pretty dated, and Blizzard has struggled to add new gameplay elements into the existing UI, so things like dual-specing, Glyphs, and raid and dungeon browsers seem sort of tacked on.

Well, given the huge changes coming to the in-game world in Cataclysm, it looks like Bliz took the change to blow up and rebuild a lot of the User Interface windows too. Professions are getting their own tab, the spellbook is updated to show much more info, the minimap can now track multiple things (or everything!) at once, and much more.

Check out the preview over here at Curse.com.

Beta Info Roundup 1 (Cataclysm Spoilers Inside)

2010-07-01T11:38:00.003-05:00

Note: no Beta Invites have been sent out yet, Blizzard is still verifying the 1st round before sending them out.

So now that the closed beta has begun and the NDA has been lifted, the information is flowing pretty freely. You can find the latest beta posts on the links on the side of the page here, at MMO Champs and WoW.com, but they are posting pretty fast so I figured I'd link a few of the highlights so we can find them later.

If you missed the spoiler tag in the title, and you still don't want to be spoiled, stop reading NOW.

Guild Perks! These are the rewards from leveling and doing things as a guild. Some highlights: Mass resurrection, repair cost reduction, more resources per mining/skinning attempt, hearthstone cooldown reduction, and 15% extra money for the GBank (from corpses) Check it out!

While you're at it, Check out some early previews of the updates to Trade Skills including this little bit of info about Blacksmithing. 290 Stamina?! On a BLUE ITEM?!

Cataclsym Beta Hunter Changes: Read this, Hunters are going to ROCK. Highlights: Camo/stealth system, a new aspect to let us auto-fire on the move, new "Venoms" which work a lot like Paladin Judgements, and much more!

Goblin Male and Female sound files: Note, some of these aren't exactly Safe for Work. Take a listen to the clips in that post though when you can. They are Hilarious, and they may not make it into the game in that form, so hear em while you can.

Also: Worgen Male and Female Sound clips as well

Breaking news: Trolls and Dwarves ALSO get warlocks. How many warlocks can Jo roll now?!

Lore Spoiler: The horde have a new Warchief, and Lady Sylvanas of the Forsaken is up to shenanigans with some of the Ex-Lich Kings newly-freed minions. Hijinks ensues!

And finally we have a MASSIVE BETA SPOILER POST over at MMO-Champions. He has screenshots of all of the zones, including areas where the world has been torn up real good by the Cataclsym. There is also links to each classes talents as they are currently in the Beta, and also links to many new items and 3d Models of things in game.

Check it out here! You can likely spend all day looking through that stuff.

And as a preview, check out the new Troll Druid forms. (Cat / Bear) Also Worgens: (Cat / Bear) WHOA!

Ruby Sanctum Strategy Links

2010-07-01T02:42:00.002-05:00

Several of us have been working on the new Raid, Ruby Sanctum, either in pugs or on our guild run late Wednesday night. Needless to say, the challenge is there.

Tankspot comes to our rescue with some resources to help us iron out the places we're having trouble with.

The first is a post with their new Strat Video of Normal Mode 10-Man, which is exactly what we need. You can find the video Here.

Also, here is a written guide with some more in-depth info on the individual abilities Halion uses during his fight. You can find that post Here.

Finally, a kill video of the World First Heroic Mode 10-man kill of Halion, by Premonition, who used to be from Alleria, and are the #1 ranked US guild. See their video Here.

Note how they tank the dragon against the edge of the fire ring in Phase 1 and 3, and how they use a different tank in phase 2 so he can build aggro in preperation for tanking the "shadow realm" version in Phase 3.

Cataclysm Closed Beta Has Begun!

2010-06-30T18:48:00.002-05:00

The closed Beta for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansio Cataclsym has begun.

A closed beta means that only people who have been 'invited' by Blizzard are allowed to play the beta, and to receive an invite you must "opt-in" to Blizzard betas via your battle.net account.

Once you do opt in and eventually recieve an invite, Blizzard will send you an email telling you that you're eligible for the Beta. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT MANY SCAM EMAILS MIMIC THESE MESSAGES WITH FRAUDULENT LINKS.

If you receieve such an email, do not click any link. Instead, navigate to http://battle.net and login manually then check for your invite status.

The full link to the Offical post is Here

This also means that the NDA is lifted, so we'll be seeing more info on what is happening in the game world very soon. I am post spoilers here, but I will label them as such and keep them out of the title.

The end of the world is coming!

Upcoming Events

2010-06-30T17:25:00.003-05:00

Reminder: The Summerfest ingame Holiday continues to run through Monday July 7th. You can get 2 Frost Badges per day, and get some cloaks good enough to start raiding in off of the single event boss, and there are a variety of achievements and quests which can earn you gold and XP as you explore the world.

Raids for the Week:

Wednesday:
Old World Raid: 8:30PM Server time. This weeks run is Zul'Aman in Ghostlands. Min. level is 70.

Thursday:
Icecrown Citadel 10man: 8PM Server. This is a run for people's well-geared toons who are not involved with the Kingslayer group that runs on Sundays. We're going to try to clear 5 or 6 bosses and perhaps continue on Friday night. Wow-heroes score above 2500 is all you need.

Saturday:
Icecrown Citadel 10man: 7PM Server. This run is for alts and newly geared characters to go and get gear. It should be a fast run with no continuation. If you have any interest in ICC at all, please show up.

Sunday:
Icecrown Citadel 10man: This is a continuation of Grator's "Kingslayer" group which is nearing a Lich King kill. They begin at 1PM Server.

Icecrown Citadel 25man: 7PM Server. The raid usually fills up early so getting on before 7PM is a good idea. We need AS MANY GUILDIES as we can get in this, because the non-guildie people we bring are many times not reliable, so we never progress far.

If you have another event you want to put up here, let me know in game (Tiberion)

Week in Retrospect

2010-06-30T17:16:00.003-05:00

I meant to post this yesterday but got sidetracked. A few of us met on Feathermoon and worked on some lowbie alts while Alleria was down all day. The guild is decently established over there with enough mats and gear in the bank to get you started, so if you have a desire to play horde somewhere, that would be a good place. If we get enough interest, we might even do a new horde night :)

Raids for the week went pretty well.

The 10-man progession group has now cleared 10-12 and is putting in work towards clearing Sindragosa. They generally run on Sunday afternoons, with continuations during the week as time allows.

The 25-man once again required a lot of pugs from outside of the guild. We got into the plague-quarter in the 2nd section, but began losing pug players again. If you can make the raid at 7PM server time Sundays, you will pretty much be guaranteed a spot. The more gulidies, the better!

We also ran another 10-man group on Saturday night to gear up alts and people who missed other runs. We cleared the easy stuff with little effort and got people some good upgrades. This raid happens weekly, Saturday at 7PM.

Lastly we continue to do an "retro-raid" every week where we go back and clear Vanilla and BC raids for the achievements. This week was Serpentshire Caverns with Lady Vash'j, which turned out to be a very interesting fight. And any instance with giant murlocs is a good one. This raid runs Wednesdays at 8 or 8:30 depending on when everyone shows up. Everyone is welcome!

Alleria to experience 24-hour maintenance window

2010-06-25T23:48:00.004-05:00

As happened two weeks ago with an initial set of realms, another set has been picked to undergo 24 hours of extended maintenance in anticipation of the upcoming expansion this fall.

Unfortunately, this time Alleria-US is on the list, so our server will be offline the entire day, from 2AM Tuesday (server time) until Wednesday 2AM Server time

If you simply must get your WoW fix that day, I am sure a lot of us will be dusting off our horde toons in the old Seven Samurai Horde-side guild, which resides on Feathermoon-US (an RP Server)- which thankfully is not included in the 24 hour maintenance (it will be up at the normal time of 1PM server time, Tuesday)

If you haven't done so before, now would be a good time to move a toon over or roll a baby hordie and get him enrolled in our 7Sam "Alleria is down" refuge.

Here is the link to the Bluepost announcing the Extended Maintenance Windows:

Extended Maintenance - Select Realms: 6/29/10

Icecrown Boss Videos

2010-06-25T13:34:00.000-05:00

Some links to upcoming Icecrown boss videos. Note that on each page there are 10, 25, and hardmore videos of each fight, so be sure to watch the right video for your situation.

Professor Putricide: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?61067-Icecrown-Putricide

Dreamwalker: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?62722-Icecrown-Valithria-Dreamwalker

Blood Princes: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?61912-Icecrown-Blood-Princes

Blood Queen: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?61918-Icecrown-Blood-Queen-Lanathel

Sindragosa: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?62751-Icecrown-Sindragosa

The Lich King: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?62999-Icecrown-Lich-King

Also, The Ruby Sanctum is coming out next week, and its going to be nice and hard. You'll want to take some time to read up and watch the video on the fight. Here is a link to an MMO Champion post of the fight mechanics, some loot tables, and a video of the 25man on the PTR server. (Scroll down past the patch notes and other stuff)

MMO Champs Ruby Sanctum Post

Ruby Sanctum 25man PTR Video

About The Seven Samurai

2010-06-25T13:08:00.000-05:00

The Seven Samurai is a World of Warcraft guild based mainly on the alliance side of Alleria-US. It has been in existence for most of the game's history. We're a casual raiding guild, running 2 to 3 raids per week and mostly focusing on 10 man raids. Our goal is to go in and have fun, and we emphasize a no-pressure atmosphere when raiding. We also do world events and achievement runs and whatever else we think will entertain us. We are an adult guild for the most part, but that means we're grown ups with adult interests, and not just that our conversations aren't always suitable for kids (though that IS the case a lot of the time :) )

If you think we sound interesting, then by all means contact one of us in game, or visit our forums! (The link can be found in the Links list on the left)