World of Warcraft

I don’t think so, but many players are concerned that the current set of instances and on to end game in Naxxraxmas (spelling) may be tuned to a caliber of player that’s too low on the skill chart (I hate to even use that term). Having only been through the Nexus, I can’t really say with any sort of surety as of yet, but if Naxx really is easier than Karazahn, then that may be the case. I think the biggest problem for me is that people equate challenge with time required.

So, for example, a good group can burn through the Nexus in about 45 minutes. For me, this is a completely reasonable start and end time. For some, however, challenge is represented by how much trash is in between boss pulls. I may never understand the concept myself, but I like instance runs that go for about an hour. If it’s a full on raid, 2-3 hours is right on perfect for me. I don’t need a 4 hour half-workday marathon when I step into a raiding instance. A blizzard CM recently commented on the issue, too:

There’s a term for this I can’t quite remember. A word to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Wish I could remember. :p

We’re always examining the content as well as the pace players are going through it. We reserve the right to modify things if we feel the current state is inadequate, but we have little to share on the subject with the expansion release only five days passed.

So, with that in mind, it’s important to realize that if they find it too easy they’ll tweak it, but I wouldn’t expect them to go back to the days of Molten Core anytime soon.

Once again I’m wowed at the uhm…dedication I guess (although I hate to use that term) that some players are willing to put into Warcraft. Maybe it’s the sense of satisfaction or an overly active competitive spirit..but Nihilum has once again put the time..and time..and time..and effort into clearing all of the content available at 80, as per their post below. Here’s what they had to say about it:

The question in all our minds right now is if we could do this, how soon until the rest of the top guilds in the world clear all the raid content that WOTLK has to offer? Did Blizzard miscalculate in the tuning of these encounters? Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?

How long indeed, but there’s also another important consideration to take into account. This guild plays more than most human beings would consider sane. This isn’t to say that it’s a bad thing..I always say if that’s what their bag is and they enjoy than have at, but it shouldn’t be the basis for content development. If a guild WANTS to spend 8-12 hour days clearing content and preparing for raids and getting all the world firsts and what have you, that’s great and if they like it continue to do so, but that’s well beyond what the vast majority of the player base would be able to put in, and so yes, you got to the finish first, but don’t complain once you get there.

I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it..but it appears that someone has already hit level 80. One one hand I definitely would like to congratulate this individual from the EU servers on a job well done. After all, doing anything like that has to take a lot of hard work and persistence.

On the other, it also meant grinding out mobs for literally more than a day’s worth of time. Never stopping, and having a friend there willing to do the same thing without any XP at all. It’s beyond my capacity to sit at a game and do the exact same thing repeatedly for 27+ hours straight…eesh..thinking about it makes my skin crawl.

But to each their own! Now that the strategy is out (I’m sure this is intended) everyone and their mother who doesn’t want to experience the quests, lore, etc. going from 70 to 80 will head out to the Grizzly Hills only to find other warlocks with the same idea. Whatever your stance on the issue may be, it’s an impressive feat, certainly not something I’d be willing to undertake!

As for myself, I’ve been leveling my mage at a snail’s pace, wandering from location to location, just shy of 71, at present. I do expect to get some significant leveling time in after this weekend, too! I’ve really enjoyed the content I’ve seen so far, and I loved being able to kill off Nesingwary’s followers once and for all….I hated those quests very much, back in the day, and the opportunity to fight back against his hunting tyranny is a fun little tangent.

With just hours (midnight!) from the release of Wrath of the Lich King, the servers have been plagued with all sorts of problem and maintenance has been extended numerous times. If you’re looking to pick up the game as soon as it’s released, one has to wonder if the servers will be up, running, and stable after you get home and everyone else and their mother is trying to login at the same time. It appears they did fix some rather glaring issues in the process.

Apparently there was a bug that allowed you to achieve free pvp gear, and this has been addressed. Additionally there were some mail problems, and it looks like these were fixed too. While I would’ve loved some pvp gear for free (who wouldn’t!?) the bug has been fixed and all pvp gear purchased has been removed, so all of those people swarming the Champion’s Hall did so for nothing after all!

My hope is that all this hullaballoo and extended maintenance gave them time to properly prepare for launch time. I don’t have a pre-ordered copy or anything like that, but I will be happily waiting in line this evening to pick up my expansion copy. Chances are that I won’t getting very much done this evening…but it’ll be fun right? I’ve heard rumors of some people dressing up as characters or some such, but I’ll believe that when I see it. I don’t think my upper-class suburban town will go for that sort of thing, but I’d be amused to see it.

Well here we are, just today and tomorrow before the expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, gets released at midnight. No doubt there will be hundreds of thousands of gamers swarming the local Best Buy for a copy. I’m curious to see how Blizzard handles the launch, considering that typically speaking, they get most of the kinks worked out before launch day and I was able to play Burning Crusade on the day it was released with relatively few problems other than everyone being everywhere, making questing just a smidge difficult.

If you’re dying for new vanity pets, you may have a slim chance of getting a Collector’s edition of the game for yourself (personally I’d just hold onto it and sell it…but maybe that’s the capitalist in me). Blizzard recently announced on their launch page that there will be a limited number of copies available of the collectors editions of the game. Personally if I was in the area I’d be sorely tempted to go wait around for a copy but…I’m not, so it’s a plain old retail version for me!

I’m torn as to whether I’ll be picking my copy up at midnight or just wait till the following day. I just know that if I pick it up as soon as it’s released it’s going to be a late night…followed by a grumpy me the following morning. Sounds like a lot of weekend’s I’ve had for some reason…..anyway be sure to get your copy, our quest to 80 begins very soon!

As the inevitable arrival of the Lich King and Northrend is just around the corner, many players are wondering what other in-game world events we’ll see before the poo hits the fan and we’re all scrambling to 80. For starters, I just want to say that I had a ton of good old fashioned fun during the zombie infestation, and the whole ordeal left me excited to see what else Blizzard has to offer the player base before we get into the expansion.

Community moderators, for their part, have been dropping hints here and there that there’s still more to see. Most recently, Neth had this to say about it:

Oh, yes. It’s alllll over. Nothing more to see. Peace and prosperity are nigh. We will now all commence the hand holding and the singing of Kumbaya.

So, it’s not exactly all over just yet! Care to take any guesses as to what the next phase of world events will be? I do hope it’s better than the scourge’s so called invasion. Zombies aside, trying to do any quests related to the invasion has been met with frustration as other players swarm the place and quickly fight the scourge hordes back to where they came from. I’d like to see a much larger scale attack on capital cities. Make it simultaneous, though, so that one city doesn’t get mobbed by everyone in the server or it’ll end up looking like the AQ opening event which is to say a slide show. Whether my hopes for world domination will come to fruition is anyone’s guess, but it’ll be exciting to check out!

I’ve always been a big fan of mixing business and pleasure when it comes to working out. After all, I’ll be the first to admit that running on a treadmill or rowing away on the rowing machine is boring…really boring. Unfortunately if you’re in any sort of shape, “gaming exercise” like playing Wiisports won’t really get your heart rate up enough to give you a good calorie burning workout. I won’t bash DDR here, cause I’ve seen a lot of gamers get into shape playing that, but what if you could mix playing Warcraft with a solid workout. Turns out, you can!

The picture above is a user that appeared over at the forums talking about how he always detested working out, but loved playing wow. So, he retrofitted his treadmill to be able to handle his gaming, and now he can hop on and grab a few miles while he’s raiding or farming for mats. I love this kind of innovation, and I hope that the gaming industry comes out with more games and equipment that meshes gaming and exercising.

Of course if you’re not so handy like myself, you have options, too! There are some manufacturers that sell pre-built exercise bikes and other equipment that’s designed to be played side by side with your video game of choice. Whether you build it yourself or buy it pre-built, it’s a great way to get back into shape while still enjoying all of the gaming you love. Talk about killing two birds with one stone, eh?

This may just be my own personal preferences, but I’m a big fan of music in an MMO. It really improves the immersion, and the setting can get you amped up in the middle of an epic raid fight or relax as you pop through the darkmoon faire. Warcraft has always been known for it’s quality soundtracks and they’ve gone out of their way in many instances to provide a unique musical experiences and even videos (as with lament of the highborne). As such, I was excited to hear from a recent blizzard CM that music will play an important role in the expansion:

If you have the music off, you are really really missing out. I know that different people have different taste in music, but the music is specifically designed to involve you in the game and the region you are in. There is both simplicity and complexity in the music depending on what emotion is being evoked and even the dissonance is calculated. If it makes you feel a little off kilter, then it’s doing what it’s supposed to be. I don’t know if you listened to BlizzCast 4 or not, but it might be something you would want to listen to for a bit more information about how the music is created and what Wrath has in store for everyone as well.

Like I say quite often, if you have constructive feedback on the music, you are always welcome to share it, but keep in mind to please keep it respectful and constructive. (Not saying that you weren’t being so, but just a reminder for those that go a little overboard.)

I’m always fascinated by the ways players manage to share their love of the game via different forms of media. From fan sites to blogs e-mail newsletters to radio broadcasts, Warcraft has really given birth to a whole slew of content sites dedicated to covering the events happening in game and out.

if you’re looking for a Warcraft Radio station to call your own, there are a number of stations out there like WC Radio. WC Radio has all sorts of shows and commentary, from RP to the latest zombie event. I’ve listed to some of their stuff and I’m fairly impressed. Perhaps I’ll be soon be able to listen to it on my Jensen JiMS 525i via some iTunes Tagging or we’ll see some Warcraft new music stations, given the game’s lengthy background and awesome music in various zones.

Man, never in my time in MMOs have I seen such a public out cry about a one time event. Perhaps I’m old and there was something that blew up the community like the most recent zombie infestation that slipped my mind, but this was quite a sight. Zombies everywhere, NPCs and lowbies alike were swept up by the plague whether they liked it or not.

On one hand it was a unique and gratifying experience to be given the opportunity to raise my own zombie army and mercilessly attacked all who opposed me. I even grabbed a few guildies and my fiance and took over Area 52 before being purged by righteous fire and shadow by overwhelming numbers from both factions. A great world event that didn’t blow the servers up? Just awesome.

On the other hand, a lot of players were NOT happy with this event one bit. Mostly this was due to the fact that players would purposely target important NPCs. Bankers, auctioneers, and battlemasters were frequently infected by the zombie hordes, and many lowbie areas were over-run with the plague. If you were looking to quest or level up during this event, you probably got swept up in the carnage even if you didn’t want to be, which was what irked the player base the most, and understandably so.

Regardless all in all I loved the event and I hope everyone looked past the minor irritants and had a good time. I hope we see something like it in the future.

There’s been an awful lot of discussion lately as to what the exact rarity should be for unusual holiday items. Obviously there’s a fine line to walk here. You don’t want the headless horseman’s flying mount to be so common that you see everyone and their mother flying around on one. On the other hand, you also don’t want to spend the next couple weeks leading up to Halloween endlessly slaughtering the headless horseman only to come up empty handed. Certainly with such low drop rates like this luck plays a huge role (ha ha!) as the random number generator means that you have a relatively small chance, depending on the roll of the dice, to see the horseman drop the mount in each encounter.

Furthermore, you also have to out roll your companions, which against five other people can prove to be rather difficult as well. I’ve never actually seen a number of mounts drop. I’ve never seen Kael’thas’s hawk strider, midnight’s mount, or the baron’s death charger. This is after hundreds of runs through strat and kara and what have you, I just haven’t seen them. I can’t imagine actually going into an instance with the sole purpose of getting an item that has such a small drop rate. There’s been a fair amount of blue responses on the subject, so I’ll end on that note with what they have to say about it:

I’ve seen the reins (horseman). I didn’t win them, *sniff*, but I’ve seen them. They are definitely rare, but not impossible.

I’ll go ahead and put the speculation to rest by confirming that this change is indeed legitimate. (Squashlings are now sometimes in treat bags!)

When the original World of Warcraft came out, there were a number of game improvements slated for later down the line that never really came to fruition. Player housing, for example, was supposed to be implemented in some form, but even after the second expansion there are no concrete plans to provide any form of housing for individual players, instanced or otherwise. One of the more eagerly awaited advancements though, was the concept of a hero class.

The original idea behind hero classes is that there would be a number of paths available to various classes to improve upon their current functionality in someway. Your mage, for example, could be become an archmage, or your shaman could become a farseer. With the recent addition of Wrath of the Lich King bringing only one hero class which, technically speaking, isn’t really a hero class at all, but rather a different hybrid that starts at level 55, it’s clear that Blizzard has abandoned it’s previous thinking on the subject. A recent Blizzard post by Neth furthers this notion:

We are thinking at current that any future hero class additions will be made in expansions further along the line so that we can control just how many classes the game has and continue to work on attaining balance as we add them.

This means that yes, we may see additional hero classes in the future, but not in the method that was originally intended. They’ll simply be additional classes that start at a higher level to prevent you from putting your face through the monitor trying to go from 1 to 80. I’m a little dissapointed myself, but hopefully with the addition of dual specs and other options we’ll see a little more variety with how each class is played.

Reading over the forums, I’m already tired at the number of posts that I see complaining about an aspect of the game that Blizzard has stated will not be balanced until the expansion is officially released: PvP. I know, I’m out there too, gleefully stomping around blowing people up in stupidly short order and getting killed in an equally rapid manner. Healers have no chance in an environment like this, because combat as it stands is roughly equivalent to me yelling “BOOM HEADSHOT” as I pop my trinkets and unload on the nearest poor bastard.

Which isn’t to say that the current state of the game is bad, but it’s important to have a good perspective on where we are right now. The new talents are out, and the fact of the matter is they aren’t balanced for play at 70, whether you’re raiding (now trivially easy) or fighting other players. Burst is and will be the name of the game until the average player’s health pool catches up to the new game mechanics, which will happen once the expansion is out and everyone’s out collecting the new gear and such.

So, in summary, just enjoy the game for what it is. Yes, some classes will seem overpowered right now, but I’ll deal with an overzealous Retribution Paladin now rather than have them nerfed into worthlessness at eighty. It’s ok that my priest gets smoked in very short order, it’s what I expected and what I will continue to expect until the Lich King gets here. Just have fun people, let the balancing work itself out!

There I was, excited and ready to go as I got done my work last night right around 9:00pm. Foolishly, I assumed that despite the huge patch, Blizzard would have the servers up and running. Unfortunately, I was met with a “retrieving character list” message that stuck for a good hour or 2. Waiting patiently I brought up a movie on Netflix (The third Pirates movie, At World’s End, was not that bad people, come on).
I got about halfway through when I finally got to the character list. Happy not all that surprised at the problems given the patch size, I logged in.

And logged in.
And logged in.
The loading screen hung, too.

At this point, I’m a bit irritated, the forums were down and the message at login had said the problem had been fixed and that all servers were up and running. Yet everyone I talked to was having the same problem I was! After about midnight gave up on getting in and switched over to Warhammer.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m the last person to complain about these things. Give me a computer, an internet connection, or a good book and I can keep myself perpetually entertained. I understand that this patch was a huge undertaking and problems were bound to happen, but at least credit us the day on our accounts. After all, everyone was chomping at the bit to get to the new talents, and most of them had to sit and stare at the login screen for hours on end. Cut us some slack, eh?